Boom! The ClusterDuff exploded yet again yesterday, with yet more revelations from Senator Mike Duffy, who took advantage of what could be his final days of the protection of parliamentary privilege, and laid out yet more accusations against the PMO. This after a morning where Stephen Harper took to the radio waves and declared that Nigel Wright had been fired, in direct contradiction to all previous assertions that Wright resigned. So while the Commons fixated on this contradiction, Senator Duffy took the floor in the Senate, and detonated his next bomb – that there was not one cheque, but two, and that the talk of an RBC loan was actually a script from the PMO that he had been made to deliver. That second cheque was from the Conservative party lawyer, Arthur Hamilton, which paid for Duffy’s legal fees – and this time, he provided documents to prove it. The party doesn’t deny covering the legal expenses, saying that they will sometimes pay the legal fees of their caucus members. This is likely an indication, according to John Geddes, that the party was still keen to defend him and by extension their decision to appoint him as a PEI senator, with their particular reading of those rules. While Duffy contended that there remains a whole other email chain in the hands of his lawyers that he wants to see turned over to the RCMP, though an envelope was later handed to the CBC which appeared to cast some doubt as to Duffy’s version of events – or at the very least was a good trial run as to his scripting around where the money came from. If there is one bright side to all of this it’s the level of engagement that the public is demonstrating, and the fact that senators are pointing to the number of emails they are receiving from people who want to see due process – and one senator that I spoke with this afternoon brought this up without prompting. And while these senators have zero sympathy for their three embattled peers, they at least want to ensure that there is process followed.
Tag Archives: RCMP
Roundup: Signing CETA
From Brussels, Stephen Harper signed the draft Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, opening up agricultural and automotive markets while eliminating almost all tariffs, though a couple of trade-offs will mean pharmaceuticals will get two added years of patent protection. The agreement will spend the next couple of years being ratified by both the various provinces in Canada and the member countries of the EU. The full text isn’t available yet either, but so far the notes are positive – even from the opposition parties including the NDP (though their language was much more cautious than the Liberals’). CBC has some numbers of what this affects, PostMedia looks at potential winners and losers, while Maclean’s Econowatch has ten things to know about it. Maclean’s also has a look at how Jean Charest got the ball rolling on the agreement. Paul Wells notes that this really is a big win for Harper, and will probably be what he becomes known for once he leaves office. John Geddes is reminded of the portents of doom that the Canadian wine industry faced with the original free trade deal with the US – which turned out to be false – and instead heralded an upturn for the industry as they took the need to compete more seriously and got rid of their crappy vines in favour of top hybrids, which is a lesson to the whinging dairy industry. Andrew Coyne says that consumers will be the ultimate winners of CETA.
Roundup: Suspending errant senators
In a blatant bit of damage control, Conservatives in the Senate have moved to suspend Senators Duffy, Brazeau and Wallin without pay for “gross negligence” in the use of their parliamentary resources. This came shortly after Duffy sent a message out to say that he was going on medical leave due to heart problems. There are concerns from Senators on both sides that this move comes without a lot of due process, seeing as none of the three have been charged with a crime, though Liberal Senate leader James Cowan noted that he felt there had been insufficient sanctions applied back in the spring, but the government didn’t seem keen on action then. I will admit to my own reservations about this move to suspension without pay without due process, but that has been mollified somewhat when it was explained that this particular disciplinary measure is not a reflection of the RCMP investigations, but as a result of the findings by the Senate’s internal economy committee that found that those Senators had broken the rules. There will still be debate on these motions and the opportunity for each Senator to defend themselves – though it was also pointed out that it will be hard to continue to garnish Brazeau’s wages if he’s suspended without pay. To top if off, Thomas Mulcair felt it appropriate to crack wise that these suspensions are a good first step and that he would prefer to see all Senators suspended without pay before they move to abolish the Chamber. Which is hilarious until you realise that no legislation could actually be passed by a chamber that was entirely suspended (and would have had to suspend itself, as only the Senate itself has the power to suspend its membership). Apparently “good public administration” in Mulcair’s books means ignoring the constitution.
Roundup: Special rules to punish Justin Trudeau
Because they are never short of such ideas, the NDP held yet another press conference yesterday to announced new proposals to make Parliament “more accountable.” What that really was code for was “let’s try to punish some Liberals, and in particular, Justin Trudeau.” You see, of their three proposals, the main one was to ban MPs and Senators from “double-dipping by banning payment for work that is part of their job as an MP or Senator.” Which is news to me because nowhere in any legal or constitutional text does it say that it’s part of a Parliamentarian’s job to be a motivational speaker. In fact, that’s the reason why certain MPs and Senators sign up to speaker’s bureaux – in order to do these kinds of gigs without having to expend their parliamentary resources on it, and because they’re not talking about matters that are related to their parliamentary duties, but usually their careers before they were in public life (Marc Garneau’s astronaut career, or Larry Smith’s football commissioner career for example), it makes sense not to treat it as part of their duties. Oh, but Justin Trudeau was able to make a successful living at this and still accepted speaking gigs after he got elected, therefore it must be awful and should be banned. Never mind that he almost always made money for the organisations that he was invited to speak at (with that one notable exception, where it was a case of organisational failure), or that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics commissioner cleared these gigs – this is strictly a case of cheap punitive politics. There can be cases made for the other two suggestions – banning parliamentarians from being on corporate boards (but family businesses are okay), and strengthening the powers of the aforementioned Commissioner – but they are less about scandals than perception. Parliamentarians have any corporate board work cleared by an ethics regime, and sure it could be strengthened, but there has yet to be a demonstrated case of any kind of influence peddling, and one suspects it’s simply a case of “corporations bad!” at work. And as for strengthening the role of the Commissioner, well, it seems to me that it’s the NDP who are in charge of the Commons Ethics committee and this has yet to make it onto the agenda when the review of her legislation is a year overdue. Perhaps if they made an effort to actually focus on that rather than play partisan silly buggers and constantly demanding investigations into the wrongdoing of individual MPs, then perhaps they might make progress on such a change.
Roundup: Yet another Duffy revelation
Oh, Mike Duffy. As soon as RCMP investigators started digging through his financial records, something else caught their eye – some $65,000 paid out to one of Duffy’s friends as a consultant for which the friend admits to doing little or no work. (Insert all of the wise-asses of the world joking about how that’s all a Senator does – and those wise-asses would be wrong, but I digress). But more curious is that the money that was paid out seems to also have vanished, because that friend is also on disability and couldn’t take the money without losing his benefits, and his wife and son, listed as president and director of his company, aren’t talking. Add to all of this is the look into Patrick Brazeau’s housing claims, for which his Gatineau neighbours thought he worked from home because he was there so often. They’re also investigating his tax filings, as he listed his address on his former father-in-law’s reserve even though he didn’t live there. Kady O’Malley’s search through the court affidavits and comparing them to the timeline turns up what she thinks may be references to those emails being turned over to the RCMP along with some redacted diaries.
Roundup: Abusing the PBO’s mandate
It’s official – MPs are now abusing the mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. A report was released from his office yesterday, which announced the costing of the Conservatives’ election promise to create a fitness tax credit for older adults once the budget was balanced. That’s right – MPs were getting him to check on an election promise that is years away from seeing the light – probably not until after the next election. Strange, but this doesn’t seem to have anything to do with independent budget forecasts or help in deciphering the supply cycle. In fact, this is little more than MPs fobbing off their homework to the PBO so that they can wrap themselves in his independent-and-therefore-credible analysis. Because math is hard! Is it any wonder that the government has become suspicious of the way in which the PBO has been operating, when opposition MPs are using it in such a way? It doesn’t matter that this particular report came from a Conservative MP either, because it’s still dealing with election promises rather than forecasts or the estimates and it still plays the independent-and-therefore-credible game. It also shouldn’t be a personal calculation service, as Galipeau was using the PBO in that manner before he “brought a recommendation” to Flaherty in advance of the budget – he has a caucus research bureau for these sorts of things. This is also an argument for not making the PBO an independent officer of parliament, because he would have no accountability to anyone at that point. When this kind of abuse by MPs for partisan gain becomes his modus operandi rather than the actual work he’s supposed to be doing then it’s hard to see how this won’t become a major problem for the way that our system of government functions.
Roundup: We have a date
Word has been given – Parliament shall resume on October 16th. That means that about three-and-a-half weeks of sitting days will have been missed, as the week of the 14th was supposed to have been a constituency week owing to Thanksgiving. Also factor in that there is an APEC Summit in Indonesia the week before, so that also affected the timing of an October return. Mind you Harper could have simply prorogued and still returned on September 16th as planned, but what can you do? (Well, withdraw confidence in the government, if you really want to be technical about it).
Roundup: More humanitarian aid for Syria
At the end of the G20 conference in Russia, Canada is pledging another $45 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees, while Harper had more harsh words about Putin and the fact that it was unacceptable that he has a veto on Security Council taking action. But Harper also put distance to the notion that we’ll be making concessions on the Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement, and said that “significant gaps” remain. Okay then. And then the biggest news of all – that Harper has basically asked Barak Obama to dictate what emissions regulations targets he wants us to set in order for the Keystone XL pipeline to be approved. It’s likely an attempt to get a firm set of numbers rather than the nebulous talk that we’re currently mired in, but so much for setting our own sovereign environmental goals and policies.
Roundup: Senators in defence of their institution
Liberal Senate leader James Cowan penned an op-ed in yesterday’s Chronicle Herald about the work that the Senate does, and the value that it provides to the legislative process in Canada. And it was an excellent read, which I’d highly recommend – it was about time that a senator was so eloquent in the defence of the institution. I do find it curious that so far it seems to be Liberal senators who are doing a disproportionate share of that defence – even though I know plenty of Conservative senators who feel the institution should be left alone (financial controls tightened, of course). Unfortunately, most of the Conservative Senate caucus, if they do speak up, are only sticking to the absurd and disingenuous party line of “the Senate must change or be abolished,” as though any of the proposed reforms would either do anything about the alleged graft of a small number (it wouldn’t), were constitutional (they aren’t), or that they could measurably be said to actually improve the institution (highly debateable, but when you look at the totality of the Senate and its work, the proposed reforms would only serve to create partisan gridlock with 105 new backbenchers for party leaders to control). I have no doubt that they want to keep their heads down because they don’t want to be accused of trying to protect their entitlements, but they’re liable to find that if they don’t speak up for the institution, that they will be the unwitting agents of their own demise, which would be an absolute shame.
Roundup: Senate hydrocarbon safety report largely ignored
The real news item that everyone largely ignored yesterday was the release of a Senate committee report that looked into the safety of transporting hydrocarbons by rail, pipeline and tanker. (Note: It made A1 of the Globe and Mail today, but in venues like the political shows yesterday, it was ignored entirely). While it didn’t delve too deeply into the Lac-Mégantic disaster, given that those investigations are still ongoing and that it happened as the committee was wrapping up its work, it nevertheless remained a relevant point to the recommendations that they were making, especially with respect to the fact that there can be all of the regulations in the world, but if companies don’t have a safety culture in place, it’s likely all for naught. (I’ll have more on this over at Blacklocks.ca in the next couple of days.