Tag Archives: F-35 Fighters

Roundup: Blocking the Auditor General

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The House of Commons (as its own entity rather than its occupants) is taking the Auditor General to Federal Court to block an Access to Information request around his correspondence for his committee appearances. The House says this is about parliamentary privilege, and the AG says that privilege doesn’t extend to his office. Kady O’Malley delves further into this, but it does seem unlikely that the Courts could even weigh in on this, and there is also that wee little fact that Parliament is a court in and of itself. Both the PMO and the Liberals say that they’re willing to waive privilege in this case. It was later revealed that the NDP were the originators of said ATIP request, which just makes this all the more curious.

Iran has responded to our embassy closures, and calls it “unwise, uncivilised, and hostile.” Brian Stewart looks at some of the possible intelligence that may have prompted the pullout, and wonders if it wasn’t threats on Canadian soil that they were more concerned with. The ousted Iranian charé d’affairs insists that they did nothing wrong. Meanwhile, Thomas Mulcair seems to be distancing himself from some of Paul Dewar’s comments regarding the embassy closures.

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Roundup: Adventures in Vladivostok

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While at the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, over the weekend, Stephen Harper and Chinese president Hu Jintao witnessed the signing of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. Harper and Russian president Vladimir Putin also agreed to disagree on the issue of Syria. While at the summit, Harper also ratcheted up the rhetoric around Iran now that we’ve shuttered our embassy there.

It looks like the new Office of Religious Freedoms may have finally found its ambassador and could be set to open soon. Of course, it was also revealed that the Muslim panellists for their consultations were “not available,” which sounds terribly convenient when you’re trying to assure people that this won’t simply be an office devoted to Christian proselytising.

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Roundup: Grumbling that Harper does his job

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Stephen Harper appointed five new Senators yesterday, including a former ADQ candidate from Quebec and a former Progressive Conservative MLA from Nova Scotia. Predictably the NDP are grumbling that Harper is *gasp!* fulfilling his constitutional duty. You know, one of the few that are actually spelled out in the written constitution.

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney says that “Dutch Disease” is not a factor, and high resources prices are an “unambiguous good” for our economy. Economist Stephen Gordon provides some annotations on the speech here.

Canada has closed its embassy in Tehran, and is expelling Iranian diplomats from Canada.

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Roundup: A minority plus some insanity

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So, it’s looks like Pauline Marois is going to attempt to form a minority government in Quebec – assuming that she can get the confidence of the National Assembly. But hey, it was far from the wipe out of the Quebec Liberals that some were predicting, and it was fairly close in seat count – within four seats at writing time. (If you want to use the flawed metric of the popular vote, it was even closer, but again, it’s a flawed metric that isn’t actually measuring what you think it is). Jean Charest did lose his own seat, and we’ll see who runs to replace him as party leader once he steps down (which is likey to be announced soon). I’ve already heard rumours that MP Denis Coderre could be interested, for what it’s worth. Also, it’s worth noting that there is really no mandate for a new referendum – sovereignty is polling at an all-time low, and the mandate between the PQ and Quebec Solidaire is far less than the 40 percent that the previous PQ government felt would be necessary to even broach the topic. So, small favours. Stephen Harper, incidentally, is looking forward to working on their shared goals – like jobs and the economy.

And then things went crazy. Marois was pulled off-stage during her victory speech as apparently a man in a blue bathrobe entered the back of the theatre, shot two people and set a fire on his way out. He was quickly arrested and apparently shouted “Les anglais se réveillent” or “The English are rising” as he was loaded into the car. One person was shot and killed, another treated for shock, and the fire was quickly doused, and things were under control in short order. It was turned the tenor of the coverage around in a flash.

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Roundup: Dispute or drawing board?

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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.

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Roundup: The Barrick connection

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There are questions as to whether Harper’s Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright, is in violation of conflict of interest rules because he sat in on a couple of calls related to Barrick Gold Corp. when they were calling to discuss concerns about government policy on the Falkland Islands, where they have operations. Wright, who is close to Barrick’s founding families, apparently only sat in on the call, and didn’t participate in any way, nor does he has personal financial stake in it – but the conflict of interest rules apparently also apply to friends benefitting, so it looks like this is being referred to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, who will doubtlessly narrowly read the rules, and declare it to be not her problem.

Here are five issues facing the incoming Chief of Defence Staff, Lt-Gen. Tom Lawson. Steve Saideman, the Patterson Chair in International Affairs at Carleton University, finds it curious that the government chose a CDS with no combat experience. Aaron Wherry collects some of his past quotes in praise of the F-35 and his use of “fifth generation” as though it were a term that had an objective meaning, as opposed to being a trademarked slogan.

The Ontario boundaries redistribution means at least a couple of new Ottawa ridings, including a new one in Nepean. Glen McGregor looks at the situation for Pierre Poilievre – take a relatively safe suburban Nepean seat, or an even safer rural Nepean-Carleton one?

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Roundup: An F-35 friendly new defence chief?

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The new Chief of Defence Staff has been named – Lieutenant General Tom Lawson, an RCAF officer with 37 years experience who is currently serving as the deputy commander of NORAD and has been a vocal proponent of the F-35 fighter acquisition. So immediately we have to wonder just what Harper is telegraphing in his choice of Lawson as CDS. Paul Wells notes that Lawson, like the outgoing Natynczyk, has a great deal of American experience, which is interesting.

The Corrections Investigator, Howard Sapers, is ringing the alarm over record prison populations and double bunking levels leading to increased violence. But wait – didn’t Vic Toews say that the prisoner population explosion didn’t happen and they’re going to close prisons because of it?

Apparently Stephen Harper “owns” the Arctic as a policy file. Um, okay, so he goes up for photo ops and to announce new National Parks every summer. But the fact that he hasn’t fulfilled any of his sovereignty-related promises, that food prices in the North continue to climb, and climate change remains pretty much a zero on his regular policy agenda, it doesn’t speak to highly for his commitment to the file that he “owns,” does it?

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Roundup: The politics of parks

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As expected, Stephen Harper announced the creation of a new national park reserve in the Northwest Territories. (A national park reserve is like a national park, but with an Aboriginal land claim). But because this is also political, it seems that the borders were drawn in a way that reflects mining concerns in the area, while the Liberals call the creation of the new park hypocritical since the Conservatives are also cutting Parks Canada’s budget. While in the NWT, Harper also said that he wasn’t prepared to spend federal dollars to make the Mackenzie Valley pipeline a reality.

It looks like some 500 federal environmental assessments are being cut in BC, though many will still face a provincial review. I think we should probably also remember that some of these “assessments” were little more than paperwork exercises around best practices, so it may not be the Armageddon that some people would describe.

What’s that? The NDP used the memorials to Jack Layton to try and score political points? You don’t say!

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Roundup: One year post-Layton

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Today marks the one-year anniversary of Jack Layton’s death, and there will be a number of memorial events taking place. Olivia Chow reflects on her life without Layton, while the public remains in the dark about just what kind of cancer it was that he died of, which raises questions about the secrecy we allow political leaders when it comes to questions of their health during elections.

Elections Canada has updated its figures on robo-call complaints it’s investigating (1394 complaints in 234 ridings), but it won’t turn over its documents to the Federal Court for the Council of Canadians’ court challenge of the results in seven ridings. (And really, it’s about interfering with their own ongoing investigation, not a conspiracy).

Here’s a recounting of the NDP’s Potemkin committee hearing on the F-35s yesterday. We don’t actually have any standing defence policy that their procurement can be applied towards, and apparently they’re still in the early testing phases so we won’t even have a realistic idea about their capabilities for several more years.

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Roundup: Detaining refugees versus the Charter

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Apparently an internal report at Citizenship and Immigration says that the government should consider detaining Roma refugees if the new changes to the Act don’t stem the tide of claimants. It’s a bit hard to see how that would be squared with the Charter, considering it would be arbitrary detention and racial profiling, no?

The National Energy Board is now demanding that report from the Enbridge spill in Michigan two years ago as part of the Northern Gateway review panel. Thomas Mulcair, meanwhile, considers the project dead, while still calling the oil sands an “important resource.” Okay then.

Despite Conservative promises that the whole F-35 purchase was going to be frozen and rethought, Lockheed Martin says there’s no change on their end and we appear to be going full steam ahead.

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