Tag Archives: Fiscal Austerity

Roundup: Extending the Nexen deliberations

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The government has indicated they will be extending the consideration of the Nexen deal by another 30 days – though this is a fairly common occurrence. Expect the renewed calls for “public consultations” to begin when the House returns on Monday.

Apparently the federal government has been studying ways to change the provincial equalisation programme. Changes to things like the way hydro revenues are calculated could have a major impact on the equalisation that Quebec receives.

Not only have the Conservatives ramped up their advertising spending in an age of fiscal austerity, it seems that over the past five years, they’ve exceeded said advertising budgets by 37 percent. Fiscal discipline, everybody!

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Roundup: Tremble before the almighty online petition!

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In another blow against civic literacy in this country, someone has decided to start an online petition to have Rob Anders removed from office. No, really. I’d like to know exactly what mechanism, pray tell, can do this, because last I checked, we don’t really have a mechanism to unseat an MP. Now, if the residents of Calgary West were serious about unseating him, well, they could challenge his nomination and sign up enough new party members to ensure that he will no longer represent the party in the next election. But oh, that would require organisation, and effort, and well, we couldn’t possibly do that. Oh, and FYI, it will not only be an open nomination before the next election, but with the new electoral boundaries coming into place, Anders is going to have to choose which of the new ridings he’ll be running in, and anyone in that new riding can organise to challenge his nomination. You know, the way that things actually work in our system.

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Roundup: Salary freezes vs casework

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MPs say they’re fine with continuing the freeze on their own salaries, but they don’t want their office budgets cut – and indeed, some want an increase – because their offices are busy doing front-line EI and immigration casework because of cuts to Service Canada. All of which is infuriating because MPs offices aren’t supposed to be doing this kind of work, and it’s something that should be addressed. It’s not only not your MP’s job to do this paperwork, but it starts blurring lines between the political offices and the civil service, which is a Very Bad Thing. This is how bribery and corruption happens, and we need to start putting those barriers between these offices and the civil service in before things get any worse.

The political loans bill is moving ahead, but the Liberals have concerns that it puts too much ability for banks to decide who should be able to run for office or not, seeing as they’ll be the primary entities able to make political loans once it passes. The NDP say they want to limit the same kinds of loans from previous Liberal leaderships – while their own last leadership contest features their own candidates taking out loans from private individuals. Imagine that.

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Roundup: The clawback climbdown

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At 4:26 pm on the Friday before a long weekend, it was time for the government to release something they wanted buried – in this case, backing down on some of the changes to the EI Working While On Claim programme. The government will now allow some claimants to return to the old system that didn’t claw back as much for low-income earners. That said, it’s a temporary short-term fix that won’t do much in the long term for those claimants.

Here’s a bit of perspective on the “largest beef recall in Canadian history.”

Uh oh – it looks like the government is set to miss its deficit reduction targets for last year.

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Roundup: Unleash the Trudeau campaign!

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So, Justin Trudeau is officially in the race, and he announced on his late brother’s birthday. And since we had six days of swooning leading up to the announcement, I expect six months of snark to follow. Aaron Wherry liveblogged the night’s events here.

Stephen Harper has announced that Justice Richard Wagner is his nominee to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court.

In an interesting interview yesterday, Maher Arar says that he identifies with Omar Khadr and the treatment he was subjected to in Guantanamo Bay, feels that the confession and guilty plea was likely false given the psychological torture and the fact that someone in that situation would sign anything for a shred of hope of getting out, and he is willing to talk to him about his situation.

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QP: Not holding the minister responsible

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With Stephen Harper back in the House, Thomas Mulcair made another attempt at getting answers about the tainted meat issue playing out in Alberta. As he read out his questions on the impact of CFIA budget cuts and whether the government understood the concept of ministerial responsibility, Harper responded by assuring him that food safety was their first priority, that they’d hired new inspectors, and that there was new legislation on the way. Malcolm Allen accused the government of “not connecting the dots” between cuts and the outbreak, but Pierre Lemieux assured him of the new inspectors and funding. Bob Rae noted that the government treated consumers as the first priority but made them the last to know, and he wondered when Harper became aware of the outbreak. Harper told him that responsibility was vested in CFIA, and they found out on September 4th.

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QP: Scripting the tainted meat debate

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It being a Monday, Harper and half of the government front bench were absent from the House, leaving Thomas Mulcair to read his questions on tainted meat to the back-up PM du jour Peter MacKay, who in turn read back some fairly bland statements about how the minister was holding CFIA officials accountable. When Malcolm Allen asked about the self-regulation of food inspection, Pierre Lemieux pointed out that Allen made a bunch of since disproven claims last week. Bob Rae then got up and wanted to know when the Minister was informed and why it took two weeks to inform Canadians, but MacKay just repeated his assigned talking points.

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QP: In the best interests of Canada

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After yesterday’s insanity, the House was still a bit raucous for QP, even with Harper gone. Thomas Mulcair read off a trio of questions about the Nexen takeover, for which James Moore – the back-up Prime Minister du jour – recited that while they haven’t made a decision yet, all decisions they do take are in the best interests of Canada. Well, that’s a relief. Malcolm Allen asked about another beef recall and four cases of E. Coli in Edmonton, to which Gerry Ritz told him that it was two separate incidents that he was confusing. Bob Rae was up next, and hammered away at the question of the food recalls, and reminded the House that members of the Ontario cabinet responsible for Walkerton were now sitting in the Federal cabinet. Amidst the clamour on the government benches protesting this, James Moore first responded with a bland statement that said nothing, before Ritz replied to the two follow-ups, praising the procedures that “bracketed” the contaminated product and ensured it was pulled. Err, except for those four cases, one assumes.

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Roundup: A day of resounding nonsense

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Yesterday was a day where Canadian politics pretty much lost its mind. First was a rumour that Justin Trudeau might be entering the Liberal leadership race next week (more than a month early), We The Media completely lost it, and wrote actual stories about how he had nothing to announce today, on top of assertions about who his campaign team will be. At least Paul Wells, Susan Delacourt and Steve Murray have a sense of humour about the whole thing.

And then there was the vote on M-312, which was a vote to create a committee to debate the definition of when someone becomes a legal human being (which of course was doomed from the start because Stephen Harper himself would not abide it). The motion was defeated rather soundly, but that didn’t stop the entire political sphere from losing its grip on reality for a while. (Incidentally, CBC has a handy timeline of the abortion debate in Canada).

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QP: Variations on EI questions and non-answers

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It being a Wednesday, the Commons was a pretty packed chamber, and MPs were riled up from their morning caucus meetings. Thomas Mulcair took advantage of this frisson in the air to read a series of questions listing off Canada’s mediocre economic performance – trade deficit, billions of dollars in “dead money,” tax cuts for businesses not reinvesting it, and so on – and wondering why Harper wasn’t listening to Canadians about the economy. Harper acknowledged that there were great challenges facing the economy, but jobs, exports and growth were up. Peggy Nash brought up the Nexen deal and wondered why they weren’t paying attention to the hollowing out of the resources sector or the concerns of Canadian entrepreneurs. Christian Paradis reassured her about the Investment Canada Act’s criteria, and that those entrepreneurs don’t want a carbon tax either. Joyce Murray was up for the Liberals, and she brought up the Conservatives’ unwillingness to hand over to the Parliamentary Budget Officer data on cuts, to which Tony Clement assured her that they are accountable to Parliament by the regular channels. For her last question, Murray asked about what percentage of foreign ownership of the oil sands the government would allow, not that she got an actual answer from Paradis.

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