The first Question Period of the last sitting week of the spring semester of the Commons kicked off with Thomas Mulcair inquiring about the legal challenge that the Parliamentary Budget Officer was bringing forward since he wasn’t getting the answers that were due to him on the government’s cuts. Conservative backbenchers scoffed as Kevin Page’s legal experts were referenced, and John Baird, acting as today’s back-up PM du jour, studiously avoided referencing the PBO at all as he talked about how financial data was continuing to be released as it always has been, through the Quarterly Reports and the Public Accounts. Peggy Nash reiterated the questions, for which Tony Clement reiterated the answer, before Nash moved onto how the omnibus budge bill was going to punish seniors, to which Diane Finley assured her that seniors were better off under their government than they had been previously. Bob Rae then got up to not only restate the case for the PBO to get those numbers, but to remind the Conservatives that they had previously been found in contempt of parliament because of their refusal to turn over the necessary figures. Baird insisted that they were elected on a plan that they were following through on, which again studiously avoided the issue entirely.
Tag Archives: Privacy
Roundup: Taking cabinet off the trade file
Stephen Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, is taking a lead role in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, as opposed to our actual international trade minister. Not unsurprisingly, it’s ruffled a few feathers. While everyone has plenty of praise for the minister, Ed Fast, it does seem that most of the federal cabinet is there purely for symbolic reasons and to reward well-behaved MPs these days. That said, it underlines the importance that this government is placing on trade deals as a large part of their economic agenda.
Harper is currently off at the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. John Geddes explains the Euro bailout/IMF issue facing Harper here.
Roundup: Gruesome deliveries
It was a grisly day in Ottawa as a severed human foot was delivered to Conservative Party headquarters, and a severed hand found in a package a few hours later at a Canada Post depot. Yikes. No explanations yet, but you can be sure that everyone is pretty creeped out about this. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a torso was discovered in a suitcase in a garbage pile in Montreal, which may or may not be related.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that he’s still having difficulty getting numbers on the cuts, but suspects they may be deeper than advertised.
The government has decided not to appeal the court decision on veterans benefits clawbacks. This means that the government now has hundreds of millions of dollars in pension repayments to sort out.
Roundup: Just take the minister’s word
While the issue of missing regulations on EI changes dominates the debate in the Commons right now, it seems that department of Human Resources and Skills Development did conduct a focus group study on what it would take to encourage people from high-unemployment areas to those regions with better opportunities. The minister has tried to distance herself from this study and her comments have consistently been about finding work within one’s region, but without any regulations on offer, we are left to take her word for it.
Seeing as political parties and voter databases exist outside of privacy legislation in this country, you would expect that this might lead to problems. Well indeed it has, with the voters’ list being abused with fraudulent robo-calls, and people being added to databases after contacting their MPs on policy concerns or case files. Who would have guessed?
Roundup: Truth and ministerial accountability
As mentioned earlier, the Speaker has ruled that there was no prima facia breach of privilege in the government’s answers on the F-35s in the House. So what does this actually mean. First of all, it should be noted that Speaker Scheer parsed things pretty finely, and in that respect, noted that it was difficult to prove a deliberate misleading, which is why he couldn’t make his ruling. (You can read the text here). Fair enough, one supposes, but there were some additional eyebrow-raising aspects to this, in that he pretty much dismissed the notion of ministerial accountability out of hand. In other words, not his problem. This means that as always, this remains a problem for the Crown, and in that, it means that the only people who can punish the Crown for ministers not taking responsibility would be the Commons, by means of withdrawing their confidence. And of course that would mean in this case that backbenchers would have to be sufficiently exercised to want to punish their own party’s government (which this current lot of spineless louts is highly unlikely to do). Marc Garneau raised the additional point after the ruling that this further insulates a government from the actions of the civil servant because they can henceforth claim ignorance, and ministerial accountability may well be a past concept.
Here is the text of the motion the NDP are proposing for splitting the omnibus budget bill. Elizabeth May blogs about the various changes found within the bill and wonders if government spokespersons haven’t read the bill considering that their talking points don’t match the reality of the text. Maclean’s Aaron Wherry has an extremely trying interview with Peter Van Loan about the bill, and his justifying the omnibus-ness of it all.
The Veterans Ombudsman has released a scathing report about the conduct and performance of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, saying some 60 percent of cases were handled improperly. The minister’s response? That they’ll soon be launching a new Action Plan™ to deal with it.
The NDP “digital issues” critic wants to investigate if social media sites are doing enough to protect privacy. Fair enough – but I don’t think that labelling them “Big Data” is really helping anyone.
Here’s a look at the number of contaminated sites that need cleaning up across the country.
And a potential Liberal leadership candidate is launching trailers for his “exploratory committee” bid, but there are cautions about what kind of fundraising he can actually do at this stage.
Up today – the Mental Health Commission is releasing their first report, outlining their strategy, priorities and recommendations, which includes the need for $4 billion in new funds over the next ten years.