Two days on the job as transport minister, and Lisa Raitt paid her first visit to Lac-Mégantic to assess the scene there for herself, and to promise that yes, the federal government will assist in reconstruction. And while the NDP complained that she didn’t come with numbers in hand, it’s like they don’t understand how federal disaster assistance works – that at the end of the process, they write one big cheque that will cover something on the order of 90 percent of the costs. It just doesn’t happen up front, which is the role of the province and municipality.
Tag Archives: Tough on Crime
Roundup: Totally cooperating with the RCMP
Remember how the PMO was going to be “fully cooperative” with the RCMP in getting to the bottom of the whole Wright-Duffy deal? Well, sources are telling CTV that “fully cooperative” means stonewalling the RCMP’s attempts get emails related to the deal. I really can’t wait for the warrant to come next…
Possibly the most damning of the reactions to the cabinet shuffle comes from one of their own – newly independent MP Brent Rathgeber quite correctly diagnoses the issue that such a morbidly obese cabinet has ceased to function as a deliberative body and is now simply a representative one, which makes all of the appointments less about the competence of the people in the jobs than about which boxes they tick off. He also makes some very salient points about how antithetical it is to conservatism that they have so many junior ministers and economic development portfolios to put them into. If you need a refresher as to some of the new faces, iPolitics created some trading cards to help you out. Jennifer Ditchburn gives a preview of the files that some of our new cabinet ministers will spend their summer familiarizing themselves with. Jason Lietar considers the PM’s social media rollout to be a success and a step in the right direction when it comes to combating Justin Trudeau’s formidable social media presence – with the exception of the badly lit Instragram videos of new ministers. Don Martin frets about the price of loyalty for the always genial James Rajotte, who has a lot going for him, but lost out in a cabinet post to the virtually unknown Kevin Sorenson.
Roundup: The AG and the power of compliance
While Transport Canada went on record stating that three of the deficient areas found by previous audits were going to be rectified within a specified timeframe that had to do with an “extension” granted by the Auditor General’s office, the AG’s office said that they’re not in any position to grant any extensions because they don’t have enforcement mechanisms – it’s all Transport Canada’s responsibility to ensure compliance. So, yeah. Well done Transport. Elsewhere, Maclean’s has breakfast with the president of Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway, where he sort of clarifies some of his comments from the previous day.
Roundup: Farewell to Bob Rae
In what was a surprise to pretty much everyone, Liberal MP Bob Rae announced his resignation yesterday morning, intending to spend more time as a negotiator for the First Nations in Northern Ontario as part of the development of the Ring of Fire region there. Personally, I find this incredibly distressing as it means we have now lost the best orator in the Commons, and one of the few remaining grown-ups when it comes to debate. This loss lowers the bar, as much as it pains me to say it. John Geddes tends to share this assessment, and especially takes not of Rae’s disappointment with how rote things have become in Parliament over the past number of decades. Aaron Wherry collects a number of videos of Rae’s speeches in the House for the past several years.
Roundup: Transparency behind closed doors
In the wake of the defeat of Justin Trudeau’s four transparency motions on Tuesday, where the NDP confirmed that they were the ones who denied consent, Nathan Cullen took to the microphones to accuse the Liberals of making it up on the fly, that the NDP weren’t informed about the motions (err, except for that public press conference in front of the Centennial Flame last Wednesday), and that it was all a big stunt so that take credit. Add to that, he went on to laud all the work they were doing behind closed doors to improve transparency. No, seriously. Cullen also says that they’re concerned that female MPs will be put in a position of jeopardy if their places of residence are disclosed under these new rules, which seems like pretty weak sauce because I’m sure it would be a pretty simple amendment that they didn’t need to include their address as part of the line item on housing or hospitality costs. Oh, and after QP yesterday, Elizabeth May moved a motion to investigate MPs using the travel points to participate in by-elections, and it was voted down, Gordon O’Connor in particular making motions to kill it.
Roundup: Denying consent for transparency
After QP yesterday, Justin Trudeau rose to seek unanimous consent for his four motions on greater transparency for parliament – MPs posting expenses, opening up Internal Economy, and calling in the Auditor General. None of them passed, and apparently it was the NDP who denied consent (though some reporters heard Conservatives dissent despite the party line being that they were in favour). What did pass was a motion from Nathan Cullen that would ban MPs from using their travel points to go to speaking gigs, as apparently the latest bout of Trudeau bashing is to assert that he apparently used his MP expenses to do speaking gigs, despite there not being any evidence to support this, and the fact that most speaking gigs include airfare as a standard part of the deal.
Roundup: Call in the Auditor General!
Today in ClusterDuff reverberations, we hear that the Government Leader in the Senate, Marjorie LeBreton, wants to call in the Auditor General to do a full comprehensive audit of Senators’ expenses, not just the systems and administration audit that he did in 2012. There have been concerns in the past that the AG, being an officer of parliament, would be in a kind of conflict auditing his own bosses, but we’ll see if those remain. LeBreton didn’t consult with the opposition about the motion, but the Liberals have since said sure – but audit the Commons’ expenses in as comprehensive manner as well. And the Government Whip, Gordon O’Connor, doesn’t sound like he’s too keen about that idea, pretending that the last AG audit into systems and administration on the House side was “comprehensive” (which it wasn’t). There are also questions as to whether the AG’s office is set to handle this kind of forensic audit, or if it wouldn’t be better to send it to an outside firm with that kind of expertise. Elsewhere, Senator Tkachuk says that they will be setting up a permanent audit subcommittee for the Senate, but they are still discussing whether or not it will have outside members (such as what Senator McCoy suggested, as they do in the House of Lords).
Roundup: The moral panic of campaigning Senators
The Toronto Star has a look at Senators who were reimbursed by various campaigns for work they did during the last election, which seems a bit curious because it’s not unusual that Senators campaign – they just can’t bill the Senate for those expenses, as Mike Duffy did. Not that it’s stopped the NDP from making a giant fuss about it, as though it’s a bad thing that party members help out in a campaign. “Oh, but they shouldn’t campaign at all!” they cry. “They’re on the taxpayer’s payroll!” Um, so are MPs, who also fundraise and do campaign activities outside of writ periods of all sorts. And some of them go to fundraisers while they should be in Ottawa as the House is sitting. And leaders? Well, they’re the worst when it comes to missing House duty for fundraisers and campaigning. They’re also on the public dime. It’s a kind of hypocritical and nonsensical argument that seems to ignore the fact that *gasp!* senators are also party members and partisans! You know, the way our system of government works, where you have governing and opposition parties in both chambers! In other words, the NDP is trying to create a moral panic, which should be paid little heed unless it can be proved that any of the Senators who campaigned billed the Senate for their expenses. And I have little doubt that none of them other than Duffy – and possibly Pamela Wallin – did.
Roundup: Distancing themselves from Duffy
After a powerful QP in the House yesterday, it was an equally exciting evening in the Senate – in particular, the Board of Internal Economy, which was opened to the public for the first time. And it was amazing. While Senate QP was focused on Senator Tkachuk, who was badgered incessantly about his decision to go easy on Senator Mike Duffy in the audit report because he had paid back his expenses (though they didn’t know at the time that it was with funds from Nigel Wright), Tkachuk nevertheless took the chair at the committee. But while there was an expectation that the Conservatives might try to defend or justify their actions, it was almost the opposite. In fact, the Conservatives on that committee, most especially Senators Claude Carignan and Elizabeth Marshall – the Whip and a former Auditor General in Newfoundland – were systematically tearing down all of the various excuses that Duffy had made previously about how it was a temporary assistant who filed improper per diem claims and so on. In fact, the whole committee meeting opened with the Senate Clerk and the financial officers describing that once they started looking at Duffy’s per diem claims, there was a systematic pattern of his claiming per diems for days when he was not in Ottawa and not on Senate business. (It should be noted that the audit didn’t pick this up because it was looking at Duffy’s residence claims, and was checking whether he was in Ottawa or PEI, but when the media began looking at the dates in the audit as compared to campaign claims and other business, this pattern emerged). In fact, the pattern that also emerged was one where Duffy was not only claiming Senate expenses when he was campaigning – which is clearly against the rules – he was also being paid by the campaigns for his appearances, which is clearly “double dipping.”
Roundup: Depressed over the ClusterDuff affair
Oh dear. The Conservative caucus is apparently terribly depressed over the damage done to their brand by the whole ClusterDuff affair, and the way it’s been handled. But as they demonstrated yesterday, it seems that they have decided to go on the offensive rather than to run with the tone of contrition that was struck at the end of last week.