The government has pledged another $3.5 billion over five years for its Maternal and Child Health initiative, in the hopes of achieving the Millennium Development Goal of 75 percent reduction in maternal mortality by 2020. CBC’s Hannah Thibedeau got a rare interview with the PM along with Melinda Gates, where Harper said that abortion is “too divisive,” which is why they weren’t funding them in developing countries, but the logic there is skewed – should they also not defend gay rights because that’s also divisive and it’s illegal in some countries? Harper also spoke about the settled science around vaccinations – and yet his government is giving tax breaks to naturopaths, which isn’t exactly science. (Also, settled science around climate change, but who’s counting?) Kate Lunau speaks about the need for better statistics including birth certificates in developing countries. Paul Wells savages the PMO’s media control at the summit, and their decision to kick journalists out of the event while trying to make those objections sound like self-obsession.
Tag Archives: First Nations
Roundup: A summit with underlying concerns
Stephen Harper’s Maternal and Child Health summit begins today in Toronto, with some luminaries in attendance like Ban Ki-Moon, the Aga Khan, and Melinda Gates. Critics are quick to say that our foreign aid dollars have not only been decreasing, but are being funnelled into this kind of cynical initiative that does more to fuel domestic concerns – after all, who doesn’t love an mom and apple pie issue like ensuring that infant mortality is reduced – not to mention those who criticise that these same programmes are not doing anything about reproductive health and access to safe abortions for women in developing countries. But on the other hand, we do seem to be making a difference and are visibly standing up for the issue, for what it’s worth. There are also concerns that the government is not being accountable for its Maternal and Child Health spending, that despite all of the data it’s putting out, it’s scattered and the dots don’t connect, making it hard to track or put together an overall picture.
QP: Strong-arming the Supreme Court
It being a Tuesday, all of the party leaders were in the House today, which is of course a rarity these days. Thomas Mulcair led off by asking which story was true — whether Harper had no idea that appointing a Federal Court justice would be a problem, or whether it was likely to be an issue before the courts. Harper equivocated, didn’t really answer and tried to say that nobody had a problem with Nadon during the process (which isn’t really true if we read between the confidential lines). Mulcair wondered why Harper didn’t get a Supreme Court reference before they appointed Nadon if they knew it would be an issue, but Harper insisted again that the NDP said good things about him. Mulcair asked why they didn’t try to change the appointment rules before appointing him. Harper responded by quoting Françoise Boivin’s praise of Nadon. Mulcair accused Harper of trying to strong-arm the Supreme Court into accepting the appointment, but Harper muttered about independent legal advice. Mulcair said that the appointment process clearly wasn’t working and needed to be changed, but Harper yet again repeated that Boivin praised Nadon, and characterized the SCC decision as “changing the rules,” when they absolutely did not. Justin Trudeau led off for the Liberals, and asked about the wage-suppressing effects of the mismanaged Temporary Foreign Workers programme. Harper batted back that the Liberals kept changing their position, and then changed topic, bringing up the PBO’s report on tax changes and how they benefitted mostly lower-income Canadians. Trudeau changed topics, and asked about the delays in filling that vacancy on the Supreme Court bench, and if it would be filled before the House rises for summer. Harper insisted that the Liberals didn’t object to Nadon’s appointment, but wouldn’t promise when a new name would come forward.
Roundup: Commence the final stretch
It’s the final stretch, as there are four scheduled weeks left for MPs to sit before we send them back to their riding for the summer. And they want to put on a good show of being productive, so they’ll be doing evening sittings the whole way through. Here’s a look at what’s on the agenda for those four weeks. It’s likely the Senate will sit for another week or so after the Commons rises, but it will all depend on how many bills the Commons passes at the last minute, and how much certain Senators want to push back at the government over things like the Fair Elections bill (for which I know there are Conservative senators who are still not happy with it).
Roundup: A looming second empty Quebec seat
The Chief Justice has written to the Prime Minister to remind him that Justice LeBel will retire on November 30th, which would mean a second Quebec seat vacant on the bench. It’s notable because often a soon-to-retire Justice would retire before the next session began, and just finish off any decisions still in the works on their way out. Instead, Justice LeBel is staying on to the bitter end, likely because the Court is not confident that the PM will have a suitable replacement in time, given the way that they handled the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Fish. Peter MacKay has promised that they’ll have a name for the currently vacant seat (that Justice Nadon was retroactively never appointed to) “soon,” but it’s also a reminder that they’d better get the process started for the next appointment as well. It’s also leading to more calls that the process as it stands needs to be reformed so as to be more transparent, so this might be the impetus to make those changes.
Roundup: Bruce Carson has a book
Stephen Harper’s former advisor, and now accused fraudster, Bruce Carson, wrote a book. And as Colby Cosh noted, historians are forever grateful to those with nothing to lose. So while the Conservatives and NDP gripe about Carson’s current status, we have stories on how Harper wanted to move Jim Flaherty to industry in 2007 but he refused to go, and that Harper backed down because he didn’t want to lose him. We have a story on how Harper gave advice to Jack Layton in the 2008 election about trying to “bury” Stéphane Dion, and how Harper had Ambrose so busy doing other things when she was environment minister that she couldn’t pay attention to her actual file. And here’s a story on how Harper briefly thought he might have to step aside while the Cadman affair (remember that?) was in full swing, before being disabused of that notion by his staff. Could make for interesting reading.
Roundup: Victoria Day and the Canadian Crown
Given that yesterday was Victoria Day, here is a look at how it’s a particularly idiosyncratic Canadian holiday, which combines the celebration of the monarch who founded our country along with the official birthday of the reigning monarch, and has a history wrapped up in things like Empire Day, but remains uniquely Canadian all the same.
Roundup: Prince Charles, PC
Prince Charles and Camilla have landed in Halifax for the start of a four-day Royal Tour visiting Nova Scotia, PEI and Manitoba. Charles was sworn into Her Majesty’s Privy Council of Canada – which he will one day lead upon ascending to the throne – which is also a rare national honour to be bestowed upon him. Also on this visit will be the launch of Charles’ Campaign for Wool in Canada, which seeks to reacquaint people with the properties of the natural fibre for all sorts of purposes.
Roundup: RCMP report released
The RCMP report into missing and murdered Aboriginal women is now out, and there are a few interesting things to note, most of them presented in helpful infographics – that the homicide rate for Aboriginal women is four times that of non-Aboriginal women, that they are most likely to be murdered by an acquaintance, spouse or family member, and that their killers have an average age of 35, are less employed, and use intoxicants. In other words, it’s a more systemic societal problem and not one that can be solved by the government’s tough-on-crime policies consisting mostly of the threat of harsher penalties. Also of note are the fact that the solved rate for murdered Aboriginal women is on par with non-Aboriginal women, so it seems less like police inattention to these deaths, but the breakdown also pointed to a very big problem in BC, such as with the “Highway of Tears,” showing that there clearly needs to be more work undertaken in that area. The report renewed calls for a national inquiry to help address those systemic and societal issues and better understand how to tackle them, while the government took the statistics from the report and said that they are taking action by doing things like strengthening programmes to combat domestic violence on reserves. All RCMP divisions have been ordered to re-examine their unsolved files on these missing and murdered women in the hopes of generating new leads, and they have six months to report back on their findings. Funds for family violence prevention programmes will also be re-directed to higher-risk communities to partner with local agencies to help address “vulnerability factors.”
Roundup: Being cute before committee
And that was Mulcair’s appearance at committee – chippy, evasive, too-cute-by-half, and when he did answer a question, he did it in a sarcastic and fulsome manner (in the actual sense of the word) so as to run out the clock. The answers were full of selective facts and half-truths, raised incorrect facts about Conservatives supposedly co-locating constituency and party offices (in point of fact they were merely in the same strip mall, even though NDP staffers tweeted out photos taken from an angle so that the party sign was in the same shot as the constituency office sign, and thus constructing a wholly disingenuous image). When the NDP members of the committee weren’t busying themselves trying to run out the clock with frivolous points of order, they and Mulcair gave obsequious paeans to how wonderfully the NDP were doing as the official opposition and how the other parties were trying to punish them for it. And when it was all over, their MPs and staffers pronounced both in the House and over social media that they demonstrated “real accountability” and showed how to answer questions. In other words, they behaved as appallingly as the Conservatives do in their evasions and talking points, and patted themselves on the back for it. Well done, everyone! You’ve done parliamentary democracy proud. The committee, afterward, ordered an investigation into who has been leaking information from this whole saga to the media. Meanwhile, CTV has learned that some of those “parliamentary” staff were working in the Bourassa by-election, which may have been run out of that Montreal office. Oh, but they were “on leave,” so it doesn’t count, which makes the insistence that there are strict lines between party and “parliamentary” staff because they have separate unions all the more dubious (as a tweet from this one Liberal partisan demonstrates). At the same time, an investigation by House of Commons administration has advised the Board of Internal Economy that NDP MP Guy Caron broke the rules by sending partisan mailers into Bourassa around the time of the by-election using House resources. Oh, but they always follow the rules, remember? Here is the At Issue panel taking on the day’s events.