Despite it being Wednesday, the Prime Minister was absent from QP, meeting with Bill Gates instead. So when Thomas Mulcair led off asking about how much time the public safety committee would get to study C-51, Stephen Blaney responded by hoping they wouldn’t engage in any dilatory actions at said committee. Mulcair wondered if the PM was trying to hide the bill from scrutiny, to which Blaney accused Mulcair of attacking the credibility of CSIS. Mulcair then listed instances of where the RCMP were in the wrong when he meant to give examples of where CSIS broke the law, before asking about the right of dissent in the bill. Mulcair then moved onto the issue of a Quebec City rail bridge, at which point Lisa Raitt reminded him of CN Rail’s responsibilities. Mulcair then moved onto the topic of a funding cut at Marine Atlantic, to which Raitt pointed out that they were returning to their base level of funding after years of increases for revitalisation. Justin Trudeau was up next, asking what the government intended to do on the doctor-assisted dying issue, to which Robert Goguen moaned about how emotional of an issue it was. Trudeau then moved onto the issue of Keystone XL, and if the PM would put a price on carbon to convince the Americans that we are serious about the climate issue. Greg Rickford gave a couple of non sequiturs to slam Trudeau, and insisted it was not an international issue but a domestic American one. Trudeau called it a diplomatic failure, to which Rickford listed off the size of our energy trade.
Tag Archives: Keystone XL
Roundup: An interim process
The Commons Board of Internal Economy met yesterday and adopted the House of Commons administration policy on harassment as an interim measure going forward, but noted that they didn’t have any mandate to deal with the harassment incidents in question, and that they should be referred to the Procedure and House Affairs Committee instead (as only MPs can discipline themselves. Parliament is self-governing after all). That leaves the two suspended MPs in limbo for the time being. The NDP meanwhile are saying that one of the incidents may have actually been sexual assault and not harassment, according to Craig Scott who was in one of the meetings with one of the complainants. But the NDP’s justice critic, Françoise Boivin, said that Trudeau should have delivered a verbal warning to the two MPs and left it at that, because they didn’t want to lay charges or file a formal complaint. So they could then turn around and claim that Trudeau didn’t do anything about the incidents once he was made aware of them? Especially if they waited until the election to make that particular reveal? Trudeau maintains that he had a duty to act, which he followed up on.
Roundup: Big turnout for Remembrance Day
It was a gorgeous Remembrance Day in Ottawa, and Laureen Harper could be heard on camera remarking that this was probably the nicest Remembrance Day she’s ever seen here. Some 50,000 people turned out for the ceremony in the Nation’s Capital, which also saw the re-dedication of the War Memorial to feature the dates of the Boer War and the Afghanistan mission, along with the phrase “In the Service of Canada,” which captures the other peace-keeping operations and missions that our soldiers have been deployed on. The Governor General delivered his speech, and Princess Anne delivered a message from the Queen for the re-dedication. John Geddes writes about why this year felt different than others past. Stephen Saideman writes about how Canada does Remembrance Day better than the Americans do Veterans Day (and Memorial Day). Maclean’s has some photos of ceremonies around Canada and the world.
The National War Memorial Ottawa. @CdnPress photo by @SKPhotography pic.twitter.com/HxqgWMrhqA
— The Canadian Press Politics (@CdnPressPoli) November 11, 2014
Roundup: A funeral felt by the nation
In Hamilton, the three party leaders attended the funeral of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, the Prime Minister speaking and addressing Cirillo’s son. The city and large numbers of first responders turned out for the funeral, and lined the streets of the procession. The Queen also sent her condolences as the regiment’s Colonel-in-Chief.
Sad exchange of letters. pic.twitter.com/s57rI0qTI4
— Stephen Maher (@stphnmaher) October 28, 2014
US Secretary of State John Kerry was in town yesterday, where he paid tribute to Corporal Cirillo, before he and Baird spoke about last week’s shootings as terrorism, and he and Harper met to discuss topics such as Russia, Ukraine, and the Keystone XL Pipeline. Michael Petrou breaks down the meaning of the visit here.
Roundup: First stop, Whitehorse
At his first stop on his Northern tour in Whitehorse, Stephen Harper announced a major Arctic research agenda to be spearheaded by the National Research Council. He wants to turn unique Canadian challenges into opportunities! Okay then. Michael Den Tandt notes that Harper is also in election mode, and is starting to flesh out his vision of the agenda for when that happens. (Den Tandt’s video file of the trip is here).
Roundup: Dubiously non-partisan advertising
The government is enlisting the Canadian Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, and the College of Family Physicians to put their logos on a Government of Canada, non-partisan ad campaign designed to talk about the dangers of marijuana. Where this becomes problematic is because the Conservative party has been making a lot of hay attacking Justin Trudeau and the Liberals over their policy around marijuana decriminalization, and it starts to look like a partisan ad using the government and tax dollars as a shield. It’s bad optics, and even if the three medical associations want to sign on because they have genuine concerns with teenagers using pot (as well they should), the timing and the current environment does taint the whole exercise.
Roundup: Another hit of distraction sauce
The NDP are set to crack open that bottle of distraction sauce as the Board of Internal Economy sits today to discuss the issue of “satellite offices.” The distraction – that they want the meeting open to the public (so that they can showboat and obstruct, like they did when Thomas Mulcair went before the Procedure and House Affairs Committee while calling it “transparency”) and when their wish is denied, they can rail to the media about how terrible the state of affairs is, and how it’s all a conviction by a “kangaroo court” that’s all just partisans being mean to them because they’re just so awesome, and all of that. The goal, of course, is to try and lose the substance of the story around their satellite offices amidst all of the other noise that they’re generating around it. Because that’s how you maturely handle a misspending issue in Canadian politics.
Roundup: Cruel and unusual cuts
The Federal Court has ruled against the government’s healthcare cuts for refugees, and given them four months to make changes before they are struck down on the basis of being cruel and unusual, and the fact that the government hasn’t offered a good Section 1 defence (reasonable limits within a free and democratic society) for their cuts. The “cruel and unusual” is a fairly novel reading of the Charter, but there does seem to be some possible basis for it. Of course, it will all come out in the appeals, since the government announced immediately that it would be appealing, before trotting out the usual canards that refugee claimants were somehow getting better healthcare coverage than average Canadians (something the judgement itself noted was a falsehood). The judgement also noted that there was no proof that the changes saved taxpayers any money, since these claimants with health conditions would generally wind up in a hospital when their problems became acute, which costs the system even more. Kate Heartfield notes that legal or not, those refugee health changes are still bad policy. And in case you need a refresher, here are some of the other losses the government has had at the courts lately, which will all be the subjects of fundraising pleas. Activist courts! OH NOES!
Roundup: Different lessons before the by-election
Not that Parliament has risen for the summer, the leaders can begin their summer tours in earnest, without having to take those inconvenient breaks to show up for the odd Question Period or a vote here or there. Because you know, they’re meeting with “real Canadians” as opposed to doing their actual jobs. And with by-elections happening a week away, both Trudeau and Mulcair are in Toronto today to campaign there, both of them drawing different lessons from the Ontario election, while the people who study these sorts of things aren’t necessarily sure that voters are committed to the same parties provincially and federally, and that they may be making a different calculation electorally.
Roundup: Sweeping, questionable changes
The House and Senate have both risen for the summer, but as they did, Jason Kenney and Chris Alexander unveiled their massive overhaul of the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme. It proposes to try and make the programme harder to use, with ever-diminishing caps on the number of workers (who were a fraction of one percent of the total workforce in the country, incidentally) with the aim of getting more unemployed Canadians, as well as Aboriginals, new immigrants and people with disabilities into these low-wage jobs. But Kenney seemed tone deaf to some of the massive labour challenges in Alberta, to demographic issues, to incentivising labour mobility, to the problems of aging populations in rural regions that are depopulating, but most especially to the attitude change that needs to happen if they think that university graduates will think that low-wage jobs in the food service industry or even higher-wage jobs in processing jobs like meat packing are going to be the answer to their labour shortages. The NDP condemned the changes without actually reading them, and all of their objections were addressed, not that it mattered. The Liberals made some pretty salient comments about the implausible changes to inspections and the giant loophole going unaddressed through the youth labour exchange programme. The restaurant and small business associations are really unhappy with the changes, which hamstring their ability to find workers in tough markets. John Geddes starts picking out the flaws in Kenney’s case, including demographics and the notion that it’s likely that non-Canadians made for cheaper and more reliable hires. Andrew Coyne says that the changes are simply bad policy, which punishes the service sector where a government goes out of its way to prevent a manufacturing job from offshoring. Coyne notes that if Canadians don’t want to take these jobs, then they shouldn’t be artificially shoehorned into them, but rather to spend their efforts creating value elsewhere in the economy while those who do want those jobs should be made to be Canadians by using the TFW programme as a pathway to citizenship.