Tag Archives: Privacy

Roundup: Final vote on C-38 due today

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At 5:30 tonight, the Senate will vote on third reading of both C-38 and C-25 – the copyright reform bill, and one can imagine that royal assent will immediately follow. With those two bills out of the way, they’ll rise for the summer.

A new cross-border privacy deal has been signed that will allow Americans to share Canadian entry data with other countries without notification. The Privacy Commissioner is reading over the agreement, and I look forward to some fairly stinging “suggestions for improvement.”

A group of federal public servants got into some trouble for wearing “Harper hates me” buttons at the office. Public servants engaging in overt partisan politics is a very bad sign, and is detrimental to the continued functioning of our system of governance.

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Roundup: Obsessing over a-bombs

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Because it was all anyone could talk about yesterday (every time someone says a dirty word…) it seems the antipathy between many Federal and Alberta Conservatives is alive and well. It’s no secret that most Federal Conservatives were lined up behind the Wild Rose during the last election, and were pretty bitterly disappointed when Redford pulled out ahead. So with Redford’s deputy PM coming to town, the chair of the “Alberta caucus” within the Conservative party asked if anyone wanted to have a gathering to meet with him. Jason Kenney’s response? No, because he doesn’t want to set a precedent for future ministerial visits, “Plus he is a complete and utter asshole.” Yep, minister of the Crown. Hitting “Reply all.” Demonstrating that he’s all class. As you may have read, Kenney refused to apologise publicly during QP, but according to his spokesperson, he did afterward. Aaron Wherry finds that this isn’t the first time that Jason Kenney has called his opponents assholes – and in the House no less.

CBSA is going to halt their plans to install surveillance technology into airports and border crossing until the privacy concerns can be addressed. You know, like they should have done before they started. They’ve also deleted recordings that have already been made. (Here’s an interview with the excellent deputy Privacy Commissioner, Chantal Bernier worth checking out).

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QP: A refusal to apologise

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With Harper still in Los Cabos for the G20 meeting, and with Jason Kenney in the news over a curse-laden email, it was up to John Baird to again take on the role as back-up PM du jour. And when Thomas Mulcair kicked off QP by asking whether there would be another omnibus budget bill in the fall – giving the oh-so-clever “more like ominous bill” as part of his answer – to which John Baird touted their focus on jobs and growth. When Mulcair turned to the issues of transparency and accountability in respect to the PBO’s search for data on the cuts (Baird: Yay Accountability Act! Oh, and the PBO has overstepped his mandate). Linda Duncan was up next to give a grave and sanctimonious account of Jason Kenney’s email in which he called the Deputy Premier of Alberta “a complete and utter asshole” – though she couldn’t repeat that in the House. Kenney stood up and not only didn’t apologise, but hit back at Duncan and the NDP for not supporting the development of the oilsands and then once again distorted the “Dutch disease” comments. Bob Rae was then up and wondered why Kenney refused to apologise. Kenney continued to not apologise, but touted his government’s “close working relationship” with Alberta and oh, he got 76 percent of the vote in his riding during the last election – as though that gives him a mandate to insult provincial representatives. Rae idly wondered what Kenney would have called him if he got 80 percent of the vote, but Kenney stuck to his non-apology.

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Roundup: Pressuring the Clerk of the Privy Council

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As his showdown with the federal government over details of the budget cuts intensifies, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page, obtained a legal opinion from a respected constitutional lawyer to try to pressure the Clerk of the Privy Council to giving up the information he’s requested. Page says he doesn’t want to have to take the government to court to get the data because it means that basically he’s lost – he won’t get the information in time for it to be useable, but at the same time, it’s a battle he needs to wage before the government treats him and his office with further contempt. Of course, this is all related to the ongoing contempt the Conservatives have been showing to Parliament over their refusal to turn over any of the requested financial data, no matter that IT’S THE FIRST DUTY OF PARLIAMENT TO CONTROL THE PUBLIC PURSE. But who cares about MPs doing their own jobs when they can (try to) get the PBO to do it for them and fight their battles for them?

The NDP made one last effort to kill the omnibus budget bill with a “reasoned amendment” that it not move to third reading. Not surprisingly, it was voted down, and the bill is now on its way to the Senate.

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QP: Never mind the PBO, check the Public Accounts

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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.

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Roundup: Taking cabinet off the trade file

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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.

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Roundup: Gruesome deliveries

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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.

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Roundup: Just take the minister’s word

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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?

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Roundup: Truth and ministerial accountability

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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.