Tag Archives: Maxime Bernier

Roundup: Glover’s staff helps to make amends

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Shelly Glover’s paid campaign staff are returning part of their salaries in order to help ensure that she gets under her election spending cap. Complicating this are the fact that the party’s lawyer previously asserted that they were doing door-knocking for a much lower rate, even though there was never any indication in the filings that either were door-knocking.

The former RCMP national director says that a likely focus of the investigation into the ClusterDuff affair will be the source of Nigel Wright’s $90,000 cheque, and if it did come from party funds, it could add to the Breach of Trust charges. Meanwhile, the RCMP have spoken with Senator Patrick Brazeau’s staff as part of their inquiry into his expenses.

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Roundup: Happy Budget Day, everybody!

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It’s Budget Day, everyone! And in what looks to be an otherwise stay-the-course budget, it appears that the big shiny object is going to be…cheaper hockey equipment. Because that matters more than anything else, and Stephen Harper must solidify his credentials as the Hockeyest Prime Minister in the history of ever! Okay, so it’s actually lowering one specific tariff, but still. Meanwhile, Les Whittington gives the five myths of Conservatives budget making. Scott Brison finds a “leaked” copy of Flaherty’s budget speech.

MPs of all stripes – including a few Conservatives – were criticising Flaherty’s move in calling Manulife Financial to stave off a mortgage war. More surprisingly is that one of his own cabinet colleagues, Maxime Bernier, was publically critical. It remains to be seen if this will be treated as a case of “Mad Max” being a maverick, or if this is a breach of cabinet solidarity, Bernier not being a “team player,” and he’ll be bounced out of cabinet – yet again. Andrew Coyne finds the irony in Flaherty lecturing people about taking on too much debt considering how much he added to the national debt.

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QP: The pressing matter of random Breathalyzer tests

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For the first time in a couple of weeks, both Stephen Harper and Thomas Mulcair were in the House at the same time for QP, and had the chance to face-off. Mulcair led-off by reading a question about random Breathalyzer testing legislation, to which Harper assured him that the government had brought in measures and would be doing more as they went along. Rob Nicholson asked two follow-ups by hectoring the NDP for not being tough on all kinds of crime. Mulcair carried on with the leader’s round, taking all five questions, with a pro forma question on the economy, which Harper shrugged off with a pro forma answer, and the final question was on the First Nations Residential Schools apology, to which Harper assured him that they were cooperating, but that some of the documents now under contention were personal records that were outside of the scope of the commission. Bob Rae was then up, asking about the need for consultation with the Northern Gateway project, with respect to First Nations. Harper assured him that they were consulting, but Rae challenged him on this, saying that the government downloaded that consultation to the National Energy Board.

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Roundup: Onto time-allocated debate

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After a much shorter voting marathon than we’ve become accustomed to, all of the amendments to Omnibus Budget Bill 2: The Revenge have been defeated, and it moves onto a one-day time-allocated third reading debate today. Remember when the government promised they’d be open to amendments and stuff? Yeah, good times.

The “temporary” measure of having prisoners in segregation double bunking – as in, two people in a small space for 23 hours a day – has been going on for two years in some prairie institutions. Yeah, this is going to end well.

Oh dear – it looks like the M-4 Unit – err, Julian Fantino didn’t get his duotronic databanks updated when he was given his new portfolio. As it turns out, he’s not familiar with the five principles of effective foreign aid that CIDA is committed to upholding.

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Roundup: Alerted to mischief days before the vote

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Uh oh. Access to Information documents show that the public were raising concerns about misleading robo-calls to Elections Canada before the election took place, and that Elections Canada was already in contact with the Conservative Party’s lawyer about said mischief. These new clues fit in with the testimony given by the owner of that one phone bank company regarding the calls they were making for the Conservatives in the days leading up to the campaign.

Some 11,000 jobs have been cut so far in the public service, 7500 of them by attrition, says Tony Clement.

There has been some drama in the Senate over amendments to the Cluster munitions treaty.

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