Despite it being caucus day, the Conservative benches were surprisingly sparse as QP got underway, but given that all leaders were present, we would at least have some excitement. Thomas Mulcair started off by asking if impersonating an elections official to suppress votes was not already a crime. Harper instead talked up his new elections bill, and all the great things that were in it. Mulcair hit back by accusing the bill of being a cover for an attack on Elections Canada given the various investigations, but Harper insisted that the courts cleared them of any wrongdoing, which wasn’t entirely the case if memory serves. Mulcair turned to the provisions around voter IDs and the vouching system, but Harper rejected the claim that this was discouraging people from voting. Justin Trudeau was up next, and brought up the tariff hikes from the last election, and noted that the lower dollar would make things even more expensive. Harper rejected the claim, and said that it was about levelling the playing field. Trudeau brought up the IMF’s projections regarding anaemic growth, to which Harper insisted that Canada came out of the recession with some of the strongest growth in the world.
Tag Archives: Procurement
QP: Fantino gives assurances
With things having calmed down on the Hill somewhat after yesterday’s excitement, and only one major leader in the House, it was certainly a much more sedate day in the Chamber. Mulcair opened with a series of questions about the closures of veteran service centres, and wanted to know if the Conservatives would be allowed a free vote on their opposition day motion. Julian Fantino, in his robotic monotone, insisted that there were over 600 points of service that were nearby these veterans, even when it was pointed out that one the nearest Service Canada centre to one the closed veterans centre in Newfoundland is eight hours away. Stéphane Dion led off for the Liberals, and asked about the recent job numbers. Andrew Saxton touted the government’s job creation record. Scott Brison got up to demand a real plan for jobs, but Saxton disputed his figures, and on the supplemental, Saxton read off a list of programmes the government brought in.
Roundup: The House returns, 2014 edition
The House is back today! Yay! Oh, how I’ve missed you, MPs. Well, most of you, anyway. You can pretty much expect to hear talk on rail safety, Canada Post, more about the unanswered questions of the Senate scandals, and the budget within a couple of weeks (which sounds like will be a lot about damage control from last year’s budget). In fact, we could see a renewed push on the Senate issue if the Auditor General does release an interim report on his audit of the Senate’s financial controls this week as expected. Peter MacKay is also going to have a busy year with having to craft new laws around prostitution, and deal with the Supreme Court case on assisted suicide. Michael Den Tandt says to expect more of the same.
Roundup: Eight years later
Today marks eight years since Stephen Harper and his Conservatives gained power. How the time flies. Chris Hall writes that those years have honed Harper’s survival instincts (which makes all of those articles about Harper stepping down this year, which are still being published, all the more absurd).
Preston Manning launched a new website to promulgate constitutionally unsound and fairytale notions of Senate reform, coupled with an online poll of which “reform” method Canadians would prefer, with the option of abolition also in there. He plans to give the results to Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre, who will use the unscientific data to make a number of ridiculous Question Period talking points, and our debate on the health of our institutions will be poorer for it.
Roundup: Applause, heckles, and a questionable accusation
Stephen Harper made his speech before the Knesset yesterday, and largely accused the “Stop Israel Apartheid” movement as being a new breed of more sophisticated anti-Semites. So there’s that. Ahmed Tibi, an Arab-Israeli MK and leader of the Arab Movement for Change party, heckled Harper’s speech and walked out, because he took exception to Harper’s characterisation of Israel as a democracy – considering that most of the Palestinians are disenfranchised – and that he feels that it is an apartheid state, contrary to Harper’s assertion. Michael Petrou live-blogged the speech – complete with drinking game – and made some quite apt observations about the reality of the situation in the region along the way. Petrou also dissected Tibi’s heckling criticism of Harper’s speech, and notes where Tibi gets things right and wrong. Meanwhile, Harper did announce an additional $66 million in aid for the Palestinian authority. And CBC has a full list of the delegation that Harper brought with him, while Liz Thompson finds that a large number of them are also Conservative donors.
Roundup: Dismal job numbers
There was some abysmal job numbers released yesterday, which sent the dollar plummeting, and a fresh round of wailing and gnashing of teeth from opposition MPs who demand a jobs strategy, which one imagines pretty much means new infrastructure programmes. Maclean’s Econowatch says that the numbers are showing that Flaherty’s wait-and-see approach to the economic recovery seems to be failing.
It appears that the government has already spent some $1.7 billion on the Sikorsky Cyclone helicopters, despite only a couple of training versions having thus far been delivered (but not actually accepted by the government because they’re not up to snuff). The price tag and the fact that the government decided to proceed with the process as is leads critics to believe the procurement has become “too big to fail.”
Roundup: Nobody panic, it’s just avian flu
H5N1 Avian Flu has claimed a life in Alberta – someone who contracted it while in China and started feeling ill on the plane ride home. Health officials are saying not to panic as it has so far resisted human-to-human transmission, and those closest to the affected person are being treated with Tamiflu, but the fact that this is going on while H1N1 is back in the news in Alberta, where ten people have died there from that particular virus is certainly causing some alarm.
Roundup: A cozy Vancouver sit-down
Stephen Harper went to Vancouver yesterday in order to meet the Board of Trade there and have a cozy little sit-down that wouldn’t be full of tough questions, and where he could repeat some talking points about how awesome the European Free Trade Agreement is going to be, and how he won’t approve pipelines unless they meet rigorous environmental standards. Of course, this message was interrupted by a couple of climate activists who got past security by coming dressed as wait staff, a stunt organised by a certain vapid narcissist whom I won’t be naming because I won’t give her the attention. Also noted in this conversation by Harper was his smacking of Barack Obama by saying that he “punted” the Keystone XL decision, which doesn’t seem to be the language of building bridges.
Roundup: No plan B
The country needs a new computer programme to deal with Employment Insurance claims, and Shared Services Canada and Employment and Social Developmemnt have until 2016 to do it – leaving almost no time to address any inevitable problems once they procure and install said new system, and more ominously, their presentation says, “there is no Plan B.” Missing that deadline means an escalation of costs, and I’m sure a whole host of other problems with the EI programme as a whole. But hey, it’s not like this government has ever had problems with procurements, and there has never been a boondoggle around new software before, right? Oh, wait…
Roundup: Trying to bury a helicopter announcement
Four-thirty on a Friday afternoon – the perfect time for a government press release that they want to bury. And lo and behold, on schedule comes the news that the government will be carrying on with the Sikorsky helicopter contract and begin decommissioning the Sea Kings next year. Err, except that those Sikorsky Cyclones won’t be fully operational until, oh, 2018 or so, and the current models that they expect our Forces to train on don’t have shielded electronics, meaning that a ship’s radar can knock them out. Oops. There was no explanation in the release as to how Sikorsky plans to get over this hurdle (as the shielding will add a lot more weight to the choppers), only that it would come at no extra cost – in fact, they already owe millions in late penalties for the ridiculous botched job that this whole procurement has already turned out to be. The best part of this drama, however? Diane Finley’s press secretary left the office immediately after sending the release, and nobody would give out his cell phone number, meaning that reporters couldn’t get a statement from the minister about this pretty big deal of a release. Because that’s the kind of professionalism we’ve come to expect from this government.