With the debate on the Iraq deployment underway, QP was a break in the proceedings. Stephen Harper, however, was elsewhere, as was Justin Trudeau, who was off watching the Hillary Clinton speech down the road instead. Thomas Mulcair led off, asking for a national inquiry on missing and murdered Aboriginal women. Kellie Leitch responded that they were already taking action rather than waiting for more reports. Mulcair changed topics and demanded to know why Canadian Forces personnel were being deployed to Iraq before a vote had been held. Rob Nicholson listed some of the forces they would be sending over. Mulcair decried the fact that the government would give tacit support to the Assad regime by getting permission before any air strikes in Syrian territory. Nicholson responded about the threat of ISIS in the region. Mulcair pressed and wondered about the Americans lowering their standards for certainty with air bombardment, giving Nicholson the opportunity to badger him about their support for taking down ISIS. Marc Garneau led for the Liberals, and asked about the humanitarian crises in Turkey and Jordan given the flood of refugees they have accepted, to which Christian Paradis assured him that Canada was sending millions of dollars in aid to those regions. Garneau returned to the question of air strikes within Syrian borders and under what conditions they would negotiate with Assad. Nicholson said that currently they would only make strikes in Iraq, and if that changed Syria might be included.
Tag Archives: Ukraine
Roundup: Buh-bye once more, Rob Anders
And it’s buh-bye once again to Rob Anders, as he failed his second attempt at a nomination race, this time in the Southern Alberta riding of Bow Valley. There, the mayor of Brooks won the race, in spite of his questionable choices in haircut, beard and waxed moustache (seriously?), after he labelled Anders a “drop-in candidate.” Anders must have secured the party’s consent to contest a second nomination, but now it remains to be seen what he’ll do next. Oh, and he didn’t even bother to show up at the nomination meeting that he ended up losing in. Apparently Alberta has tired of him and his antics. I just can’t wait for him to denounce that riding as having been infiltrated with liberals and communists, as he tries to find the last vestige of a people who wear their prejudices as proudly as they drive their pick-up trucks.
Roundup: Voices from the past
A number of has-been pro-life (and homophobic) former Liberal MPs sent out an open letter to Justin Trudeau decrying his decree that a woman’s right to choose is a Charter issue and not a matter of conscience. They decried it as “anti-democratic,” never mind the fact that this was the policy voted on by the party’s membership during the policy convention before Trudeau won the leadership. Oops. The pedigree of these former MPs is also worth mentioning, as several of them quit the party to join the Reform Party, while others left over the same-sex marriage issue. Not surprising, most Liberals simply shrugged off the whole thing, while Trudeau tweeted out a fairly decent comeback.
The days when old men get to decide what a woman does with her body are long gone. Times have changed for the better. #LPC defends rights.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) September 18, 2014
Roundup: Military assistance for Ukraine?
As you probably saw earlier, the President of Ukraine was in Ottawa, and beyond just giving a speech to Parliament, he’s also looking to expand on the $200 million loan arrangement, and wants more military assistance – not combat troops, but reconnaissance, as well as signals intelligence and satellites, and moving toward a free-trade agreement between our two countries.
Poroshenko visits Parliament
There was no Question Period today, given the visit by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to Parliament, and in lieu of business in the Chamber, he delivered a speech to a joint session of Parliament. I hadn’t intended to live-blog the speech, but for posterity, here are some of my tweets, for those of you who aren’t following me on the Twitter Machine.
Harper with the president of Ukraine. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/P2L6HrrAHs
— Dale Smith (@journo_dale) September 17, 2014
Someone at BBC picked up on this photo, but in crediting me in his tweet, I became subject to a lot of anti-Poroshenko tweets in my feed. Yay Twitter!
Roundup: Return of the fiscal imbalance
Well, the premiers have met and have spoken and they think the federal government should pony up some more money – try to act surprised, everyone! Not only that, but they’re trying to revive the term “fiscal imbalance,” because it seemed to work the last time. In particular, they want more money for health to deal with an aging population (despite being guaranteed increases for the next decade) and reliable infrastructure funding (which is a bit more of a legitimate gripe considering the way the government back-loaded the Building Canada Fund). There was some talk about trade and labour mobility agreements, but nothing earth shattering on the interprovincial trade barrier file. Christy Clark noted that the topic of the constitution was not up for discussion – not even to bring Quebec into the fold at long last. Getting in his two cents, New Brunswick premier David Alward (who may not be premier for much longer, as his province is in an election) took the opportunity to lash out at Justin Trudeau for his saying that they should put a hold on more fracking until more studies of its impacts can be done. Alward says that New Brunswick can’t wait because it needs the jobs now.
Roundup: Totally not a partisan ad campaign
Remember those anti-pot ads that the government plans to run, which totally aren’t partisan and totally not about Justin Trudeau? Well, as it happens, they don’t show up in planning documents, and there’s no budget for new television advertising, especially for ones geared toward marijuana specifically. But remember – it’s totally not partisan. Really! And it looks like those doctors’ groups are starting to reconsider their participation, because they can see what’s going on.
Roundup: A possible trade setback
Ruh-roh! Word out of Brussels is that Germany is poised to cancel the Canada-EU trade agreement because they don’t like the investor-state protections clauses, believing that they impact on national sovereignty. Things are still being hammered out, and the government’s only response is that negotiations are continuing, but if this deal fails, that’s going to really deflate Stephen Harper’s boasts, along with the softening jobs numbers and continual reminders of scandals of his own making.
Roundup: Commence the final stretch
It’s the final stretch, as there are four scheduled weeks left for MPs to sit before we send them back to their riding for the summer. And they want to put on a good show of being productive, so they’ll be doing evening sittings the whole way through. Here’s a look at what’s on the agenda for those four weeks. It’s likely the Senate will sit for another week or so after the Commons rises, but it will all depend on how many bills the Commons passes at the last minute, and how much certain Senators want to push back at the government over things like the Fair Elections bill (for which I know there are Conservative senators who are still not happy with it).
Roundup: More pledges and hints of strategy
As part of the pledge not to raise personal taxes should he form government, Thomas Mulcair has added one that he would never appoint a senator. Never mind that he would be constitutionally bound to do so as it’s a listed imperative in the text, or that the mounting number of absences would start to grind the legislative process to a slow halt, or the fact that once a future government does start making appointments again, it’ll create a further shock to the system that will cause more problems down the road. But hey, it’s easy to make facile promises without thinking about them, right? Paul Wells parses this promise as well as Mulcair’s other promises, like biannual first ministers meetings, to get a glimpse of what Mulcair’s emerging constitutional strategy might look like. Michael Den Tandt looks at Mulcair’s economic promises and pokes holes in the conceits that they can grow the economy and attract investment while increasing taxes on corporations, especially if all of our pension plans are dependent on those corporations turning a profit.