Tag Archives: First Nations

Roundup: Leadership versus grassroots

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So that #IdleNoMore protest is getting more interesting as internal divisions become evident. Chiefs are talking about making “breach of treaty” declarations and cross-country economic disruptions, while the founders of the movement are distancing themselves from the chiefs, as part of the protest is to get around the established power relationships and keep the movement at the grassroots level. These founders have even distanced themselves from Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence, calling her hunger strike as being in support of the movement, but that the movement is about Aboriginal people and not the chiefs. Spence is trying to get said grassroots to unite with the chiefs rather than shame them for past mistakes, and says that the chiefs are ready to “humble themselves.” But the founders point out that the movement is about the people taking the lead, and not the established leadership. (And if you’re still not sure what it’s all about Pamela Palmeter, who ran for the leadership of the AFN last year, breaks it down for you here).

Remember those reports of the new polymer dollar bills melting? The Bank of Canada insists that it’s not actually possible – but won’t release their internal data about it under the exemptions for national security and international relations. Also of note is that the number of complaints of mutilated bills declined sharply with the new polymer banknotes, for what it’s worth.

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Roundup: Heading in a dangerous direction

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Former Prime Minister Joe Clark met with Chief Theresa Spence on Saturday, and says that Canada and the First Nations are headed in a “dangerous direction,” and is calling for direct and honest dialogue. Spence then met with Liberal and NDP MPs and Senators on Sunday, who described her as “quite weak” but nevertheless determined. Meanwhile, here is a look at the persistent and unsolvable problems with the Attawapiskat reserve.

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Roundup: Fobbing off responsibility onto the Speaker

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Two former MPs and the former Commons law clerk are talking about bringing in some rules changes to empower the Speaker to bring more order to the Commons – and there we get into the decorum distraction yet again. The Speaker already has tremendous powers to expel members from the House, or to deny them the opportunity to speak if they misbehave, but they are rarely employed. Former Speaker Milliken didn’t want to expel anyone, lest they go running to the media in the Foyer and getting a bigger soapbox, or they could take off and travel or dine at House expense. His suggestion was penalties that would affect their privileges – such as docking their pay or expenses for the day, but he couldn’t get traction for that idea when he broached it previously. But whenever these discussions come up, there needs to be the awareness that the Speaker is just the referee and not omniscient – he or she can’t determine whether or not answers are deemed sufficient, or have a hand in committee business, or determine whether or not omnibus bills are out of order. For one, it puts too much power in one single individual, but for another, it further absolves MPs of their own responsibility to conduct themselves appropriately. They have tremendous powers to hold themselves and each other to account if they actually wanted to – but they don’t. Hell, it’s their job to hold government to account, and not the Speaker’s, so if the government makes huge omnibus bills, it’s the job of MPs from all sides to call the government out – not the Speaker’s. But no – they fob off the responsibility to someone else, preferably the Speaker, because he’s “neutral” and thus, more “authoritative,” never mind that it’s an intellectually and politically lazy construct. The NDP are great at this narrative right now, with Nathan Cullen holding press conferences vowing greater decorum and proposing all of these great powers to the Speaker to enforce it, and then half an hour later, during QP, his own caucus members are standing up and calling cabinet ministers names. Oh, but they’re just being funny, Cullen says, and if the Speaker doesn’t like that, then he can put an end to it. Sorry, no – if you want to preach decorum, then practice it. Meanwhile, let’s come up with more proposals to further treat MPs like a) children with no impulse control or b) drones whose only task is to recite speeches prepared for them by the leader’s office, and vote according to how said leader’s office demands. Because that’s the sign of a mature democracy.

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Roundup: Late to the planning stages

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Are we back? It feels like we’re back now.

Despite the fact that we should definitely be planning now for the 150th anniversary of Confederation celebrations that will happen in 2017, both the federal and many provincial governments remain rather mum on the subject, with the federal government barely giving handwavey signals that they are thinking about said anniversary, with things like the Museum of History announcement.

A report on the death of a Canadian soldier by Israeli forces was quietly removed from the DND website, a move that the soldier’s widow believes is a political move by the government meant to shield Israel from criticism.

As the US gets to work on its cyber-security issues, Canada will need to play a part given how integrated much of our infrastructure is.

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Roundup: Page takes aim at the real problem of Parliament

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iPolitics‘ Colin Horgan had a good talk with Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, who breaks down some of the key concerns that his office has – that the political executive is now steamrolling budgets through without due diligence and telling MPs to trust them and check their work afterwards, when the Public Accounts come out, because the process is so convoluted. And he’s right – it is broken, but not only because the executive has gamed the system, but because MPs have decided to abdicate their responsibility to scrutinise the estimates because they have other priorities, like their eleventieth Private Members’ Bill that won’t see the light of day, or scoring political points in the scandal of the day, or pet hobby projects that yes, they may care about and may be important, but ultimately at the cost of their actual job of scrutiny. Add to that how they’re using their staff to shepherd through passports and immigration files rather than assisting them in the actual analysis work. Yes, the system needs to be fixed, but I will caution that the changes need to come from the ground up. Voters need to demand that their MPs do their due diligence, and MPs need to take that job seriously and not fob it off onto the PBO, as they have been doing, often under the rubric that his numbers can be trusted because he’s non-partial. Meanwhile, there is insufficient pushback – especially from the government backbenchers, who aren’t supposed to just parrot mindless slogans – and we wind up with a situation like we have today. At least Page is talking about the actual problem and laying the blame where it needs to be laid, rather than just pouting about the current government being mean (as so many others are doing).

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Roundup: Sovereignty via subcontract

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Buried in last week’s KPMG audit of the F-35 programme was the revelation that the government planned to contract out air-to-air refuelling of the jets, seeing as the systems we have in place are currently incompatible. When this was pointed out two years ago, the government said, “Oh don’t worry, we’ll adapt our systems.” By adapt, apparently they meant subcontract. And nothing says asserting sovereignty over our airspace than getting the Americans or some other private companies to do our air-to-air refuelling for us. Great job, guys!

The Supreme Court handed down a split 4-2-1 decision on witnesses wearing niquabs – basically saying sure, but only some of the time, and here’s some guidelines to think about. Emmett Macfarlane examines the split and comes down on Team Abella – the single dissent that said while we’d like to see more of a person’s face than less, on the whole it’s not as big of a deal as it would be to have people to choose to not testify at all.

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Roundup: The GG and the Chief

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Despite Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s demand that the Governor General be part of a meeting with the Prime Minister as a condition of ending her hunger strike, His Excellency has said that it’s not his place to meet with her over political issues, and will defer until given political instruction to do so – which is how things work under Responsible Government, in case anyone has any doubts.

Jason Kenney plans to re-launch the federal skilled workers immigration programme by May, which he hopes to keep more foreign-trained doctors and engineers from driving cabs (never mind that the biggest holdup to credential recognition is provincial regulatory bodies).

As was promised, the government has moved to eliminate gun show regulations – not that they were ever actually implemented in the first place.

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Roundup: Pilfered equipment and logistical nightmares

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Some 400 containers of military equipment remain in Afghanistan, much of which has been pilfered after the land route to the port in Karachi was closed. But hey, it was all non-sensitive equipment, so this logistical nightmare remains the most cost-effective route, etcetera. Meanwhile, our Sea King helicopter replacements won’t be ready this year or next. I’m quite sure that by the time we do get them, they’ll be free given the amount of penalties that Sikorsky will have racked up by that point.

Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike continues, and she demands a meeting with Harper and/or the Governor General and not the minister.

Economist Stephen Gordon shows why we won’t have effective climate policy in this country anytime soon – nobody wants to pay for it. And the research of climate groups proves it.

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Roundup: Witness protection without oversight

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The government introduced new witness protection legislation yesterday that the opposition sounds to largely be in favour of, though the proposal doesn’t include any provision for external review or oversight, which shouldn’t really be a surprise given this government’s apparent dislike of such things.

The PBO produced a report on public sector compensation for the sake of having baseline figures to use when looking at the impact of job cuts to government expenditures. And yes, he found some interesting figures about how its growth outpaced inflation and other levels of government. But all everyone will see is the “average $114K” figure, not think about what that includes or the range of salaries it encompasses, and will froth at the mouth about how horrible those bureaucrats are, and so on.

The Chief of Attawapiskat is engaging in a hunger strike in Ottawa to force a meeting with the Prime Minister about treaty obligations. The Minister of Aboriginal Affairs has offered to meet with her, but we’ll see what happens with that.

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QP: Predictable questions on Nexen and the F-35s

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The last sitting Monday of the year was a bit scrappy, but not to the point of rancour. All three leaders were in the House, which I am taking to be a sign that the House will rise before the week is out. Thomas Mulcair angrily read off a trio of questions about the Nexen takeover and accusing Harper of not respecting the rule of law. Harper responded by assuring him that the decisions were made under the current laws and that going forward there would be no more acquisitions by state-owned companies. Matthew Kellway was up next to ask about the leaked numbers from the KPMG audit of the F-35s and demanded an open competition. Ambrose insisted the secretariat was doing just that, and reminded him that the more years you add to the lifecycle, the higher the cost figure grows. Bob Rae pressed on about F-35s, repeating previous government statements about their necessity. Harper gave the party lines about how no money was spent on acquisition and that the CF-18s needed to be replaced. For his final question, Rae asked for the terms and conditions of the CNOOC and Petronas purchases to be made public. Harper reminded him that it was not yet the proper time to do so, as there are confidential commercial concerns.

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