Remember those Economic Action Plan™ ads touting the new Canada Jobs Grant programme that doesn’t actually exist yet? Well, as it turns out, only five percent of respondents bothered to actually go to the website to find out about them, and a mere two percent call the 800-number. But the best part is that Advertising Standards Canada also got involved to smack the government on the wrists for misleading advertising, saying that the programmes existed when they haven’t been implemented yet. $2.5 million well spent, apparently. Meanwhile, PostMedia obtained some of the aborted branding strategies that the government was considering using to attract international investment, many of which suggested that the country is just a work in progress.
Tag Archives: Telecom
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: Trudeau’s power of positivity
Justin Trudeau says that positivity is driving his party’s increased donations, which could very well exceed the Conservatives yet again in terms of number of donors, though it remains to be seen if they will top them in dollars. Among Trudeau’s examples of “positivity” are things like not piling on James Moore’s “hungry kids” gaffe, in part because it was Christmas. For what it’s worth, anyway.
Government spending on professional services – outside consultants for the most part – was down last year, yet employment in the sector remains high.
Roundup: Mourani renounces separatism
Pauline Marois has managed to do something particularly spectacular – she turned Maria Mourani from a dyed-in-the-wool separatist who ran for the leadership of the Bloc Québécois, into an avowed federalist. Indeed, Mourani announced yesterday that she is renouncing separatism and embracing Canada, because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the best way to protect minorities and Quebeckers as a whole, as opposed to the proposed Charter of Quebec Values. There remains no word if Mourani will seek to join another party – Thomas Mulcair said that she’d need to run as an NDP candidate before she could sit in their caucus – but it is a pretty big blow for the separatist movement.
Roundup: A lost learning moment
It was an unusual scene, where the Speaker of the Senate arranged a media event inside the Senate chamber. His purpose was two-fold – to give a bit of a lesson to journalists about the history and role of the institution, as he was alarmed that the kinds of misinformation that he’d seen in the media over the past several months; he also wanted to try and answer as many questions as he could at once. Unfortunately, much of the former goal as a “learning moment” seemed lost on many of my media colleagues as they started asking him questions as though he were the person in charge, as opposed to the presiding officer, and as such, it’s not up to him if they end up calling Michael Runia or Senator Gerstein before committee, but rather, it has to be a decision of the Senate. What they did find out was that the Senate is cooperating on getting those emails requested by the RCMP, and that parliamentary privilege cannot shield senators from an investigation.
Roundup: Taking aim before the by-elections
One almost suspects that the Conservatives are worried about the Trudeau phenomenon in the upcoming by-elections as they continue to mount increasing attacks against him, whose relevance to reality slips further and further away. Today it was Peter MacKay suggesting that Justin Trudeau told schoolchildren that recreational drug use was okay and hay for legalising pot. Um, except that’s not what happened, but rather that at a school event he was asked about it, and Trudeau said that not only should children not use pot because their brains are still developing, but that right now the government’s approach was ineffective. Well done Conservative attack machine operating under MacKay’s name. Meanwhile in Toronto Centre, the NDP put out releases that decried how awful it was that Chrystia Freeland laid off all those journalists when she was at Reuters, but conveniently omitted the line from the story where the Reuters spokesperson specifically said the layoffs were not Freeland’s decision. Added to that, the NDP somehow intimated that they would protect media jobs by rewarding job creation with tax breaks. Erm, corporate taxes are not the woe that is facing the haemorrhaging media industry, and unless they plan to shut down the Internet and start subsidizing newspaper subscriptions, I’m not sure how exactly they’ll protect media jobs.
Roundup: No closure, new motions
There remains no resolution to the issue of the proposed suspensions in the Senate, as the Conservatives there found their attempt to impose closure to be out of order and they have pulled the motions in favour of a new one, which ties things up even further. Oh, but apparently their ham-fistedness is the Liberals’ fault, because they won’t stand aside and just pass it. Because yeah, that’s how things work in our parliamentary system. As it stands, those motions may not see a vote until Friday, but may stretch into next week. Glen McGregor checks Mike Duffy’s speech against his speaking notes, and where the deviations from Hansard were. Joe Clark doesn’t think too much of Harper’s handling of the whole Senate situation. Paul Wells dissects Harper’s role in the mounting problems facing him with the Wright/Duffy affair, and how his usual stubborn streak is playing out – in spades. Chantal Hébert wonders about Nigel Wright’s silence in the face of his demonization by Harper, and how he may be the one to bring Harper down. Andrew Coyne bemoans the way in which the Conservatives are chucking away the conventions that govern our parliamentary system.
QP: Harper hits back — at the Liberals
It’s Thomas Mulcair’s birthday, not that he was really going to get any answers out of Harper as a gift for the occasion. Mulcair began by asking a rather lengthy question around the stonewalling around what Nigel Wright knew, but Harper insisted that Wright kept the whole affair to himself. Mulcair brought up Ray Novak and Marjory LeBreton’s alleged call to Mike Duffy telling him that the deal was off. Harper responded that Mulcair was buying into the story that Duffy was the victim rather than the fact of the misspending that got him booted from caucus. When Mulcair tried to clarify whether or not Harper had singled out Duffy at the caucus meeting in February, Harper said that the spending of the three senators was brought up in caucus and he made his emphatic statement then. When Mulcair asked when Harper did threaten to expel Duffy from the Senate, Harper reiterated that rule-breakers had no place in caucus. Leading for the Liberals was Dominic LeBlanc, as Justin Trudeau was speaking away speaking in Washington DC. LeBlanc asked why one former PMO staffer who was involved was promoted despite potentially criminal behaviour. Harper responded by calling out Liberal senators for holding up the suspension without pay of those three senators. LeBlanc pushed, bringing up or their questionable hires by the PMO, but Harper kept insisting that the Liberal senators were keeping those misbehaving from being punished (which is of course false, as they are simply looking to put it to committee to give it due process).
Roundup: Pat Martin vs. the spirit of the law
It has been revealed that Pat Martin’s legal defence fund for his defamation suit by RackNine was paid for by a loan from the NDP, and is being repaid by donations from unions. All of which is of course legal in the Conflict of Interest Code because he doesn’t actually see that money, but with corporate and union donations banned, it does set up a system that looks to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. Doubly ironic is that it’s happening to Pat Martin, and there are fewer MPs who are holier-than-thou and will rage with fire and brimstone about the ethical lapses of other MPs – and that he’s the one who helped create the Code with the Accountability Act back in 2006. And as one Liberal commenter said, by getting other people to settle his debts, Martin can no longer criticise Mike Duffy. Somehow, though, I suspect he’ll rationalise it all and keep up his moral outrage, one way or another.