Roundup: Delay for the sake of delay

With Parliament now risen for the summer, The Canadian Press decided to take a look back at the rise in obstruction tactics by the opposition in the last couple of months, and some of it is blatant obstruction for the sake of obstruction. And while a number of the usual pundits decried the piece, I think there are a few things to drill into here – not because I don’t think that there are legitimate uses for opposition obstruction and filibusters (because there certainly are), but what it says about the tone of this current parliament.

There are a few examples cited in the piece about opposition tactics that don’t make sense – the insistence on running out the clock on a six-hour marathon of speeches over the Senate public bill about Latin American Heritage Month that all parties supported (though I’m unsure how, procedurally, a Senate public bill got that many hours of debate because it should have really gotten two under private members’ business), the vote-a-thon tantrum that was cynically designed to simply kill Friday hours rather than make any meaningful points about the Estimates that were being voted upon, or the hours of concurrence debates on committee reports that all parties agreed upon. The piece makes the point that there are concerns that these tactics were designed to force the government to bring in time allocation on more bills in order to get them through, so that they could turn around and accuse them of acting in bad faith after they came in promising not to use time allocation (despite the fact that it’s a defensible tactic under most circumstances).

To a certain extent, this is the government’s fault for coming in trying to play nice and operating under the rubric that all parties can be reasonable and agree to debate timetables. That hasn’t always proved true, and when Bardish Chagger’s proposals around scheduling motions like they use in the UK got shot down (legitimately – it’s not something I would have really supported because it means automatic time allocation of all bills), she warned that time allocation would be used more frequently, and it certainly appears that the opposition parties have dared her to do so with their tactics. But I do find it frustrating as a parliamentary observer that good faith attempts and allowing more debate gets abused in order to try and embarrass the government rather than making parliament work better, and then they can complain when the government has to play hard(er) ball. We already know that the rules in which we structure debate here are broken and need to be overhauled to ensure that our MPs are actually debating rather than simply reciting speeches into the void, and that they in fact can encourage this kind of dilatory behaviour. The measures that Chagger proposed to make Parliament work better wouldn’t have actually done so, but I don’t think it’s illegitimate to shine a light on delay for the sake of delay because it does highlight that there are problems with the rules at present. But we need to get over the kneejerk reactions that calls to do so are about partisan purposes rather than about the health of our democracy.

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Roundup: Equalization, feigned outrage, and outsourced research

Apparently, we’re talking equalisation again after it was “revealed” that the current formula was renewed for another five years in the budget implementation bill and nobody cottoned on to the fact. Err, except that it was right there for everyone to see. And so you have a bunch of performative outrage from the likes of Jason Kenney about how this was the “deceitful scrapping of Equalization Renegotiation talks,” which is of course, utter bullshit but he need to create outrage that will drive his base – because if there’s anything that will be guaranteed to drive outrage in the West, it’s the deliberate lies being spread about how equalisation works in order to make themselves look like the victims in all of this (never mind that even in the depths of the recession they had the highest fiscal capacity in the country, and the fact that they have a deficit because they made the political choice to keep taxes low and not implement a PST in Alberta). But why be truthful and talk about the system honestly when you can foment outrage with lies? Way to go there. Sure, you can make the point that there could have been more public discussions around it, but there were discussions at the federal-provincial level, despite what Kenney claims.

Which brings us back to the issue of whether or not this change in the budget implementation bill was done underhandedly. Obviously the fact that it was a) in the budget; b) in the budget implementation bill for all to see; and c) raised at committee, clearly it wasn’t being hidden very well if that was the intention. Add to that, there have been ongoing consultations at the ministerial level for months, which again, not exactly being done sneakily. Paul Wells dug into the paper trails and found all of the receipts. And yet it’s being decried as having been done in some underhanded fashion. Why? Because the Globe and Mail reported that this was done “quietly.”

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If this is indicative of any problem, it’s the fact that our opposition parties are not doing their jobs. The Conservatives have long-since outsourced their opposition to the Globeif their QP questions are anything to go by (and confirmed by this latest “outrage”), not to mention the outsourcing of yet more homework to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and more to the fact, rather than doing their jobs of scrutinising the legislation and the budget, they spent the entire spring session railing about the India trip, inventing much (though not all) of the outrage out of whole cloth, and demanding the “costs” for the carbon tax where much of the data is already publicly available or does not exist where provinces have not yet come up with their plans. But instead, they spent their time trying to invent smoking guns that would “prove” that this government is out to raise taxes to pay for their deficits (again, ignoring that the funds from carbon prices all get returned to the provinces). If you’re the Official Opposition and can’t do your own homework, then what exactly are you doing? You’re in parliament to do a job – not to generate outrage clips for social media. And yet here we are.

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Roundup: Silence from Trudeau on child removals

While all attention is glued to the horror show south of the border when it comes to child removals from migrant families, there is a lot of commentary around the conspicuous silence by this government, and from Trudeau in particular. While he said that he’s not going to “play politics” around this, some of his ministers have made comments to the effect that this policy is “simply unacceptable,” but Trudeau is largely mum. If anything, the government has taken a particularly defensive tone by talking about how much work they’ve done to reform immigration detention in this country, and to not separate children from their parents and only detain when necessary (and the record has improved, but it had some particularly dark spots in recent years, from suicides in detention to people being housed in provincial jails when there were no other immigration detention facilities available). There is an assumption that this is because he’s trying to “play nice” with Trump, but I’m not convinced about that.

If anything about the particular problem we’ve had with irregular border crossers over the past two years has shown, it’s that there is a narrative about how Trudeau’s #WelcomeToCanada tweet created the crisis. I’m not convinced that it did, but that’s the narrative. Given this crisis at the American borders, with migrants coming in from conflict zones in Central America, and with global refugee numbers at an all-time high, you can bet that Trudeau is doing his level best to be circumspect in all of his statements, not because of Trump, but rather to avoid another surge of migrants headed for our borders, and into a system that is already swamped (in no small part because they’ve been unable to make timely appointments to the IRB, and because it’s still under-resourced). Now, if Trudeau made sweeping condemnations about what’s happening in the US, that could be seen as another open invitation, which would stress our system even further. Add to that the calls from the NDP and others to suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement – a move that would immediately cause a massive rush for our ports of entry to claim asylum, again, swamping our already stressed system, beyond the diplomatic escalation that removing the “safe” designation from the US would cause. And the Trump administration may be fine with it, and do all it can to push more of their migrants to our borders and say “good riddance.” Regardless, I see Trudeau’s silence as an abundance of caution and trying not to create a larger border crisis than the one he’s currently dealing with, no matter the fact that what’s happening in the States is unconscionable.

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Meanwhile, as if to highlight Canada’s own record, there was testimony before the Senate Aboriginal People’s Committee about how child removals within Indigenous communities continues to erode them, given that currently child welfare workers are more likely to separate children from their families than get proper assistance for those families in crisis, and that the numbers today are akin to another residential schools system. So, yeah. We don’t have a clean record, and I’m sure this would quickly be thrown in the government’s face if they said anything.

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Roundup: Derailing a summit for macho posturing

So, that was quite some G7 summit. I would say that I can’t even, but, well, at this point, it’s becoming harder and harder to be surprised by the Trumpocalypse, so, yeah. For those of you who missed the drama – and it was a hell of a lot of drama – Trump played nice until he took off early from the summit, and then after Justin Trudeau gave a press conference in which he tried very hard to downplay any tensions, but reiterated the same statement’s he’s made plenty of times over the past couple of weeks in talking about how the US tariffs are kind of insulting, and that no, he has no intention of agreeing to a sunset clause with NAFTA, that Trump tweeted up a storm from Airforce One about how Trudeau had stabbed him in the back, and how the steel and aluminium tariffs were in response to our dairy tariffs that form part of the Supply Management system (which puts a lie to the claim that the tariffs were for national security reasons), and that he had instructed his officials to no longer endorse the communiqué that he had previously agreed to. Sunday morning, Trump’s mouthpieces were arguing that there was a special place in Hell for people who negotiate in bad faith with Trump. Oh, and they pretty much confirmed that Trump is going on this rage bender because he wants to look tough in advance of his talks with North Korea, which is…novel. And ridiculous. But to her credit, Chrystia Freeland continued to take the high road, while Trudeau carried on with his meetings with the “outreach” countries who also attended the G7.

Here’s a recounting of the behind-the-scenes moves from the weekend, including the Friday night session between the leaders to hammer out the joint communiqué, and how that was already unravelling the next morning. Senior officials continue to be puzzled by the whole thing, considering that Trudeau has been consistent in his messaging. Trudeau and Freeland tried to keep the focus on what was accomplished – the fund for girls’ education in war-torn regions and the oceans plastic charter (that neither the US nor Japan signed onto, for the record). In the States, John McCain tweeted his support for Canada in this (but it might help if congressional Republicans stood up to Trump over this, but we’ll see if that happens). And that famous photo that everyone is sharing? Other leaders, including Trudeau’s official photographers, are tweeting other angles of it.

In hot takes from this weekend, Evan Solomon says that the government’s tactics need to change as waiting out Trump’s moods is clearly no longer an effective strategy. Scott Gilmore offers suggestions as to how to boycott Trump’s business interests. Paul Wells takes a few well-deserved shots at Trump’s talking heads, and suggests that their calling Trudeau weak is because he hasn’t been, and that perhaps it’s time for Canada and its allies to give a retaliatory response that is worth the Americans fearing.

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Roundup: Performative anxiety over the pipeline bill

There’s a bit of performative wailing and gnashing of teeth emanating from the Senate, as the nonsense bill from Conservative-turned-Independent Senator Doug Black about declaring the Trans Mountain pipeline in the national interest passed earlier this week, and they have no indication whether it will be passed by the Commons in short order. After all, there are only some eight days until Kinder Morgan’s “deadline” comes to pass, and under the politician’s syllogism, something must be done and this is something, therefore we must do this. Never mind that as a bill, it’s constitutional nonsense because the preamble invokes Section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution Act 1867, and the project is already federal jurisdiction because it crosses a provincial boundary; invoking the section would imply that it is provincial jurisdiction (it’s not), or that it would perversely declare a federal issue to be provincial for the sake of declaring it federal again (which sets up a really terrible precedent for the future). The bigger problem is that it’s a Senate public bill, which means that when it gets to the Commons, it needs a sponsor (not a difficult get for Black in this case), and then it goes into the queue of private members’ business. It could be weeks before that refreshes and it earns a slot for debate, which will be well past the artificial deadline from Kinder Morgan. This despite the fact that the bill should be defeated because it’s constitutional nonsense. And the Conservative senators who are currently complaining that they have no indication if the government will pass the bill immediately know better – there isn’t a mechanism for them to do so, barring a motion to pass it at all stages once it’s on the Order Paper. Which it’s not. But hey, facts have never stopped anyone from making a big show of something like this before, so why start now?

In other pipeline news, no other company has publicly declared that they are willing to take over the Trans Mountain pipeline if Kinder Morgan backs out (but I’m not sure why they would say so at this point, because I’m sure it would drive up the price if they sounded eager). Jagmeet Singh has firmly put himself in BC’s camp on the issue, earning the rebuke of Rachel Notley – and the fact that he hasn’t bothered to even call her has Notley questioning his maturity. That western premiers meeting that Notley sent her deputy premier to instead happened, and said deputy didn’t sign onto the final communiqué because it wouldn’t show support for Trans Mountain, while BC premier John Horgan talks out of both sides of his mouth, demanding that the expansion be halted while demanding the existing pipeline continue to carry fuel for BC, and insisting that the two are very separate issues.

Meanwhile, as Alberta turns into a single-issue province, I continue to be amazed at the hyperbole being expressed on this issue. One pipeline advocate yesterday referred to BC as a “rogue state.” Guys. Seriously? The most BC has done is hold a press conference and file a court reference that they are likely to lose. This drama queen routine is getting a little embarrassing.

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Roundup: Erin Weir’s apostasy

First thing Thursday morning, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh took to the microphone in the Foyer, caucus behind him, to announce that he had expelled Erin Weir from caucus following the conclusion of the investigation into harassment allegations. And to be clear, he wasn’t kicked out because of the conclusions, given that Weir agreed to anti-harassment training and conciliation with his accusers – rather, it was because he had the temerity to go to the media to respond to the leaked allegations made to him without getting the permission of the leader’s office. And then the other MPs told reporters that Weir “expelled himself” by doing so, because it meant there was no trust in that relationship. So…wow.

To be clear, we don’t have much in the way of details about the allegations that were sustained in the report, but we have Weir’s word for them, and the clues that Singh dropped. That the former senior staffer in Mulcair’s office leaked to the CBC forced Weir’s hand in responding (which he says he asked Singh’s office, and they never responded to him), and this was the basis of the policy dispute on the floor of the Saskatchewan NDP convention where that staffer threw her weight around, and then accused him of harassment. As for the three “sustained” incidents of sexual harassment, Singh said it was because Weir failed to read “non-verbal cues” but that when he was told his advances were unwarranted, he ceased. Weir says that he was told over the course of the investigation that it was essentially because he’s a “close talker” and failed to realize that it made some people uncomfortable, but he has no idea who his accusers were, and says that after the initial complaint about him that the party essentially put out a “call for proposals” from staff to see if there were any complaints, which does seem a bit suspicious. It also seems like there is a giant inflation in terms of what constitutes harassment and sexual harassment, particularly coming from an MP who is a bit socially awkward.

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Weir contends that he will sit as an independent for now, hoping that Singh will see reason, but given how the ranks have closed around him in a way they didn’t when David Christopherson got punished for breaking ranks on a vote suggests that Weir is now guilty of some form of apostasy, particularly that he had the temerity to defend himself in public when his accuser apparently leaked to the media to get ahead of the report when the leader’s office would have had him be humiliated publicly while he waited for permission to respond, which reinforces this notion that there can be cult-like behaviour in the party. Meanwhile, Don Martin suggests that the outcome of this mess suggests that this became a witch hunt, while John Ivison contends that this whole affair is not reflecting well on Singh, who continues to flounder as party leader. At Issue also took a look, and notes the rumours circulating that the party was looking for an excuse to boot Weir for whatever the reason.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau says they will not delay implementing legal cannabis, but that will still likely mean a September rollout, and that legalization is a “process.”
  • Scandal! The Trudeau family’s meals are prepared at 24 Sussex and then sent to Rideau Cottage by messenger! (Seriously? This is what we’re worrying about?)
  • The federal government will intervene in the BC Court of Appeal reference on pipelines. This is standard since their jurisdiction is up for question.
  • Bill Morneau says they’ll have a better handle on the costs to households from carbon pricing in September when all provinces have submitted their plans.
  • An audit shows that the programme to help veterans transition to civilian jobs was next to useless. The government has since switched to a different system.
  • Scott Brison isn’t looking to budge from his $7 billion fund in the Estimates to get programmes moving, while the real problem remains the sclerotic bureaucracy.
  • The government used their majority to reject nine of nineteen Senate amendments to the transport bill. Now we’ll watch senators huff and puff before passing it.
  • The Commons privacy committee is ordering Cambridge Analytica to preserve vital data in advance of investigation, given news of their bankruptcy proceedings.
  • The military is being accused of “brass bulge” as upper ranks are growing faster than the regular forces are.
  • In case you were curious, it turns out that part of why the parliamentary lawn is being dug up is because they have to replace the drainage pipes below it.
  • While the Supreme Court of Canada upheld his influence peddling conviction, Bruce Carson is likely to avoid jail time.
  • NDP MP Kennedy Stewart is considering a run for Vancouver mayor.
  • Here’s a good profile of Doug Ford, and what the experience of working with him on Toronto City Council was like.
  • The Canadian Press’ Baloney Meter™ tests the Conservative claim that they cut emissions without cutting taxes. (Ron Howard’s voice: “They didn’t.”)
  • Colby Cosh contends that our system worked in keeping outsider Kevin O’Leary away from political leadership (but that Doug Ford was a perfect storm).

Odds and ends:

A documentary crew is looking to film the Senate’s third reading speeches and vote on the bill to end whale and dolphin captivity.

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Roundup: Yes, the Conservatives did it too

Amidst the faux drama in QP this week about the apparent discrepancy between the Dogwood Initiative getting funding for an anti-Kinder Morgan activist while the government refuses to give funding to groups that use such summer jobs grants to pay for students to distribute fliers of aborted foetuses, or to groups that refuse to hire LGBT students, I find myself losing patience with the constant refrains that if the Conservatives engaged in this kind of behaviour, there would be riots in the streets.

Reminder: the Conservatives did engage in that kind of behaviour. They wantonly defunded all manner of organizations, whether they ensured that women in developing countries could access safe abortions, whether they advocated for women’s equality here in Canada, or if they were ecumenical social justice organizations that engaged in education and outreach at home and abroad. They defunded the Court Challenges Programme which helped ensure that minority groups like the LGBT community could do the work of bringing their challenges to the Supreme Court of Canada (because it’s expensive and law firms can’t do it all pro bono). They cut funding to HIV and AIDS services organizations and diverted all manner of funding to a vaccine initiative that they then flaked out on and frittered away millions of dollars so that they had no impact (and the results of those cuts are still being felt today as the current government wants to shift funding priorities to prevention). They prioritized refugee resettlement for Christians in the Middle East over Muslims. They engaged in abusive auditing over charitable organizations that opposed them ideologically. All of this happened, in the most petty and mean-spirited manner at that, and there weren’t riots in the streets. There were a handful of protests, and the media barely mentioned a number of these cuts.

Is the way that the government handled this attestation on the Summer Jobs Grants heavy-handed? Yes. Was the wording clumsy? Probably. But groups aren’t being denied funding because they’re faith-based – they’re being denied funding because they’re refusing to either sign the attestation, or they’ve tried to rewrite it to suit themselves, despite the fact that the government has said repeatedly that “core mandate” refers not to values or beliefs, but daily activities. In all of the rhetoric and pearl-clutching, the actual facts are being distorted and need to be called back into focus. We also need to focus on the fact that the real problem here is that MPs get to sign off on those grants, which is a violation of their roles as guardians of the public purse, and instead makes them agents of the government in distributing spending (clouding their accountability role). But sweet Rhea, mother of Zeus, this constant invocation that “if the Conservatives did it…” is bogus and amnesiac. They did it. All the time.

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Roundup: Let’s not punt it to the Supreme Court

As the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion drama continues to chug along, we saw that Bill Morneau had a meeting with Rachel Notley and while nothing specific was announced, it was stated that something is on the way in fairly short order. Add to that, Jim Carr was doing the media rounds saying that the pipeline will get built, and it’s a question of how, which is an important clue. And then came Jagmeet Singh, who decided that his contribution to this is to insist that this all get referred to the Supreme Court of Canada in a joint federal/provincial/First Nations reference. Because showing political leadership apparently means fobbing off the tough questions to the Supreme Court. He also suffers from the delusion that the Court could act swiftly on this, ignoring that it would take six months to even pull a reference together (seriously – the Court wouldn’t hear it until the fall at the earliest). And then his environment critic went on Power & Politicsand said that even if the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the federal government and that the project could go ahead, they’d still oppose it because obviously it would be a wrong decision. Yeah. Okay.

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As Carissima Mathen explains in this segment of The House, the Supreme Court doesn’t like to be used for political purposes, reference questions are generally of general application, and even referring the question of jurisdiction to them would imply that there is doubt that the federal government has it, which settled case law clearly demonstrates that they do. (Likewise, going Jason Kenney’s route and invoking Section 92(10)(c) implies that there is doubt that these pipelines are federal jurisdiction when we know that they are, hence why it’s not only a redundant course of action, but it creates damaging precedent). And that’s why Morneau was pretty explicit when he shot down Singh’s proposal yesterday – they know they have jurisdiction, so it would make no sense to refer it to the SCC. On a related note, the BC NDP have changed their rhetoric around using every tool in the toolbox to oppose the pipeline and are now pledging to use all tools to protect their coastline and environment, likely because they got a legal opinion that said that they have no jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Ditchburn notes that Indigenous protests against the pipeline aren’t a side plot – and she’s right, but it’s also separate from the jurisdiction issue, and should be treated as separate. (I also suspect that the government will argue that approval was given before they legislated implementation of UNDRIP, and that they did additional consultation and created the Indigenous-lead monitoring committee, so that should satisfy Section 35). Chantal Hébert sees few options that the federal government could use that would still maintain provincial peace. David Moscrop wants everyone to cool their jets because this isn’t actually a crisis, but rather how democracy and federalism actually work. Jen Gerson looks at how this failure would be the signal of a bigger market failure in Canada, and open us up to creating an institutionalized culture of kickbacks and corruption when it comes to major projects.

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Roundup: Three senators went to Washington

Three Conservative senators went to Washington DC to talk about marijuana legalization, and you may be shocked to learn that they were not reassured by any of it. They were told that Homeland Security isn’t adding any new resources to the border so Canadian travellers may face more delays, and they were told of all of the new cartels that have emerged as the crime rate has skyrocketed in Colorado. And oh, how the loopholes around home-growing are being exploited by criminal elements. Woe! Most of this should be taken with a particular grain of salt – there has been no proven causal relationship between the increased crime rate in Colorado with marijuana legalization, and if there are Mexican cartels looking to exploit loopholes to export it from the state, I’m not sure that’s as big of an issue in Canada if the whole country is legalizing instead of a single province. And as for the border, well, individual agents already have immense discretionary powers now, so nothing is really going to change there.

What was curious in all of this is how the Government Leader in the Senate – err, “government representative,” Senator Peter Harder, complained that these three Conservatives were “undermining the government” by taking this trip. I’m not sure that it’s a very credible complaint considering that they weren’t claiming to be headed down there on behalf of the government – rather, it was under the rubric that they haven’t been getting straight answers from the government, so they wanted to get answers for themselves. It’s almost as if they were exercising the discretion afforded to them as part of the “independent Senate” where they don’t have to ask the government’s permission to engage in such activities. And let’s not kid ourselves – this was a very partisan exercise, and I’m sure that most Canadians can see that it clearly was. They’re not exactly hiding it, but they’re also doing their duty as the opposition to get the information they think they need to hold government to account. The sky isn’t falling here, and Harder is coming across as a little thin-skinned in making the complaints he is.

Oh, and for those of you asking, it’s likely that this trip was paid for by the Senate, but bear in mind that Senators are allowed travel to Washington as part of their duties (and in fact, a trip to Washington is included as part of their annual travel points). There’s no actual scandal here for anyone to point to.

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Roundup: Propaganda and democratic interference

During a media availability yesterday, Justin Trudeau mentioned the Russian embassy’s propaganda efforts in linking Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather to Nazi publications in World War II as a reason for expelling diplomats that he accused of interfering in Canadian democracy. Almost immediately, we got some of the more obtuse pundits in our commentariat fretting about why we didn’t expel those diplomats at the time that happened, and why the government couldn’t just say that last week when they were asked how those Russians had interfered. And to clarify, Trudeau cited that as an example, which is very much interfering with our democratic processes. And as for why they didn’t expel them earlier, I direct you once again to Stephanie Carvin’s Open Canada piece about the expulsions, and why we allow intelligence officers to stay when we know that they’re engaging in espionage activities. Seriously – go read it.

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And funnily enough, Carvin had pointed to that attempted Russian propagandizing days earlier when responding to Susan Delacourt’s column that wondered why we weren’t taking the allegations of Russian interference with more alarm that we have been. As Carvin points out – it’s not just cyber that we have to worry about, and if MPs were actually doing their jobs, they would be far more focused on this issue rather than re-litigating the Atwal Affair™ again and again to score cheap points.

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