Minister of State for Finance Ted Menzies has announced that he won’t be running in 2015, and has taken him out of the running in the upcoming cabinet shuffle. With Vic Toews’ resignation said to be imminent (and I’ve heard this from caucus sources), this is likely the first of a number of such announcements to be made in the coming couple of weeks. It remains to be speculated if Menzies decision is a genuine desire to move on, of if this isn’t a face-saving exit with political capital intact if he was told that he wasn’t getting back in. Nevertheless, this fuels the shuffle speculation fire in the coming weeks.
Tag Archives: Terrorism
Roundup: The RCMP officially get involved
The big news yesterday was that the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Mary Dawson, has suspended her probe into the Wright-Duffy affair as the RCMP have begun a formal investigation into the matter. And then the RCMP confirmed this fact. So it’s all getting very real, ladies and gentlemen. It’s now in the big leagues, though it further gives the Conservatives an out from commenting on matters (“as this is an ongoing police investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment” will be the new line in QP). On a not-unrelated note, Liberal Senator Joseph Day is starting a campaign to close that loophole in the Conflict of Interest Act that allows public office holders to accept “gifts” including cash from friends without reporting it. Day also noted that they tried to close this loophole back in 2006 when the Accountability Act was first being debated, but the Conservatives and NDP struck it down.
Roundup: Poor, poor Mike Duffy
Poor Senator Mike Duffy. Poor, poor Senator Duffy. So poor, in fact, that he had Nigel Wright, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff write him a personal cheque for $90,000 to cover his housing allowance repayment. And how did the dear Senator repay Wright for his very generous gift? By bragging around town that Wright had done it, enough that those emails found their way to one of Duffy’s former journalist colleagues. Oh, and such a “gift” would also be against Sec. 17(1) of the Senate’s Conflict of Interest Code. Oops. (And apparently the Ethics Commissioner on the Commons side is now looking into Wright’s actions). Now, there is some ambiguity in those regulations, predicated on what constitutes a gift and just how close of a friendship the pair have – and that came as the bombshell later in the day. After an afternoon of Conservative talking heads peddling the story that the pair were very close, and that Wright helped Duffy out because he was concerned about his financial situation given his health and all, comes the revelation that Duffy tried to say that he got a loan from the Royal Bank and that Wright had no part in this, and more than that, insiders say that Duffy and Wright barely know one another. This despite PMO’s assurances to the contrary, although they tried to paint this in that altruistic light, while simultaneously trying to shift the attention to Senators Brazeau and Harb instead. They were also trying to peddle the line that Harper knew nothing about this – that his own chief of staff cut a cheque to make a noisy and embarrassing story go away, and yet the boss was kept in the dark? Yeah, that’s totally plausible. Tell me again how this is going to end well for any of the parties involved.
Roundup: A Liberal win in Labrador
The people of Labrador have spoken, and by a rather large margin have decided that Liberal Yvonne Jones should represent them in the House of Commons, rather than forgiving Peter Penashue and giving him another chance. The wisdom on the ground is that this was entirely a local race and had almost nothing to do with the national scene, Justin Trudeau’s leadership and whatnot. Penashue said he accomplished more in two years than any other MP anywhere, which is the kind of hyperbole we’ve come to expect from the guy who apparently did ALL THE THINGS for Labrador, and hence this defeat will be Labrador’s loss. The Conservative Party also issued a graceless statement which nevertheless tried to turn it into some kind of indictment of Trudeau’s leadership, claiming they lost twenty points since his leadership win (though no one has seemed to find any polls which had them over seventy percent), and claiming that majority governments don’t normally win by-elections (which is also not exactly true, considering how many they’ve won to date). Jones’ win means this is the first time that the Liberals have increased their seat count at the ballot box in over a decade (the only other time they’ve increased their count, of course, being when Lise St-Denis defected from the NDP).
Roundup: The demise of the honour system
The audits on Senators Duffy, Brazeau and Harb came out yesterday and found against all three, and while Duffy had pre-emptively repaid all of his expenses, Harb was ordered to pay some $51,482 and Brazeau some $48,744 (both figures include interest). No word on Brazeau’s reaction but Harb is not going down quietly. While he did resign from the Liberal caucus, he has also retained a very prominent lawyer to represent him as he challenges the findings. Because part of the audit also found that there was ambiguity in the rules, and those ambiguities are were Harb really fell into. There was also news that Senator Duffy had improperly charged per diems while he was in Florida on vacation – but he blamed that on a temporary assistant while his usual one was on maternity leave, and that he repaid those expenses immediately upon finding out the error. Meanwhile, the Liberal Senate leader, James Cowan, has said he does want to see if these results can be turned over to the RCMP, the Senate has also adopted new rules that spells the end of the “honour system” that the Senate previously operated under. The Senators that I’ve spoken to have no problem with this, but this isn’t over yet. Susan Delacourt muses about the public reaction to misspending rather than egregious behaviour like these three senators’ entitlements, lying to the House or contempt of parliament, and what kind of signal that sends.
Roundup: Good little grumbling soldiers
Some Conservative MPs are grumbling because they’ve been good little soldiers and submitted their names to the speaking list, and when those “rogue” MPs stand up and get recognised instead, they feel put out. Aww, the poor dears. Never mind that we should abolish the lists entirely and make MPs stand up and actively participate rather than follow up and read prepared speeches into the record in faux debate like good little drones, as what our parliament has degraded to. If the poor dears have something that needs to be said, they can stand up too and hope to be recognised.
Roundup: Mulcair sees a conspiracy
After allegations were made that the Supreme Court of Canada somehow intervened during the patriation of the Constitution, the Court’s investigation has turned up no documents to suggest that this is the case. Not that there was anything that they could really be expected to find – phone records from 1982? And every justice on the bench at that time is now deceased, so it’s not like they could ask any of them. This, however, is not good enough for either the PQ government in Quebec, nor Thomas Mulcair, who seems to think that the Supreme Court is somehow covering something up. No, really, though one is left to wonder how much of this is yet another attempt to pander to nationalists in Quebec. And thus we can add another institution that Mulcair has “respect” for – the Senate, the Crown and now the Supreme Court. So much respect…
Roundup: The NDP get cute with the Senate
Because it seems that the NDP haven’t had their fill of amateurish stunts yet, they have decided to try to haul the Speaker of the Senate and the Leader of the Government in the Senate to a Commons committee to discuss the Senate’s budget allocations. Apparently they think that the Senate isn’t actually a separate institution of Parliament, but just an arm of the government. Err, except that it isn’t. Here’s the thing that the NDP doesn’t seem to be grasping – aside from the basic constitutional position that the Senate holds within our system of government – and that’s the fact that two can play that game. While the Senate may not be able to initiate money bills, they can certainly amend them, or hold them up in committee indefinitely. And if the NDP wants to get cute and try to make the Senate put on a little dog and pony show for the committee in order to justify their spending, well, the Senate can do the very same thing, and question the basic budget allocation for the Commons and MPs expenses. While the NDP might bring up the few cases of improper residency expenses and travel claims that took to the media spotlight a couple of months ago, Senators could do the very same thing, and in fact, have a better case than the MPs would. You see, the Senate’s expenses are far more transparent than those of the Commons. Senators submit their travel claims to quarterly reports, have their expense claims posted publicly, and even their attendance is recorded and publicly available. That’s how all of this came to light in the media – because journalists checked it out. (Well, a certain Senator who shall remain nameless also leaked a number of things because of internecine warfare, but that’s another story). But MPs are not subject to the same levels of public scrutiny that Senators are, and if the NDP really want to down this route, then I don’t see why the Senate shouldn’t call Speaker Scheer and the various party leaders before the Senate’s national finance committee to justify their own expenditures. After all, they’re not public, and these are public funds that they’re expecting to spend, so it would be in the interest of sober second thought that these Senators very closely examine this spending and ensure that it’s in the public interest for the Commons to get these allocations. And it was only a couple of years ago that improper housing claims by a number of MPs were brought to light, and well, the Senate may need to ensure that this kind of thing isn’t going on again. You know, for the sake of the public. You see where I’m going with this? There’s a word that the NDP should learn – it’s “bicameralism.” They may not like it, but it exists for a very good reason, and they should educate themselves before they decide they want to get cute.
Roundup: The ruling is enough
It seems that in the wake of the Speaker’s ruling on members’ statements, the restless Conservative backbenches have backed off of their support of the Liberal opposition day motion on making Members’ Statements alphabetical in distribution. The feeling seems to be that the Speaker’s advice that if they want to stand up and be heard, that it was enough for them. Um, okay. We’ll see if that actually happens, especially considering that the delicate balance of party allotments are also in play during both Members’ Statements and Question Period in general, but it seems to me that this becomes a case of everyone being contended with half-measures, rather than any genuine reform. Sure, Warawa might have been surprised to learn that the lists are mere suggestions for the Speaker, but that doesn’t mean that MPs – or Canadians – should be satisfied by this ruling. Rather, it should be the springboard to the restoration of our Parliament to the way it should act – without lists or scripts, where MPs are engaged in the debates, actively participating, capable of delivering actual back-and-forth exchanges with spontaneity and class, rather than the dull recitations into the record that we’re now seeing.
Roundup: MPs behaving like MPs
After much anticipation, the Speaker delivered his ruling on the whole Warawa privilege complaint. The verdict – no prima facia breach of privilege, but MPs need to grow up and behave like MPs. In other words, the lists the whips provide are just suggestions, and the Speaker can choose to ignore those lists if he sees fit, but that means that MPs need to want to participate in the debate, not simply assume that they have that spot and that he’ll wait for them to use it, or that someone else won’t be interested instead. Some MPs responded here and here, Aaron Wherry parses the meaning of the ruling, and John Ivison gives his own take of the ruling.
This all having been said, let me offer my own two cents – that this is a good first step, but that it really does fall on MPs to make the change they want to see. And unfortunately, because there is such a reliance on scripts, that we’re unlikely to see too much uptake on this invitation by the Speaker for MPs to behave like MPs. We’re going to see almost no uptake by the NDP, because in their need for uniformity, nobody wants to speak out be anything other than unanimous, as that would be unseemly. The Liberals already have far less of a firm hand on the whip, which means the real test of this change is going to come from the Conservative backbench – how many of them will want to do their actual jobs as an MP and hold the government to account rather than just suck up and support blindly, how many of them want to ask questions of substance during QP rather than deliver a fawning tribute or a thinly veiled attack on the opposition in the form of a question, and how many of them will want to eschew the “carbon tax” talking points and the likes while still ensuring that they have their say and are not being punished for not following those talking points. We will have to see how many of them are prepared to take that step and show that integrity and respect for parliamentary democracy.