Stephen Harper remained away from the House of Commons today, off in Montreal to address a conference, leaving Peter Van Loan to face off yet again with Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair tried to ask about the omnibus budget bill, and list off all of the items being cut or changed in it, but Van Loan responded with accusations that the NDP want Canada to bail out Europe, and – oh, wow, that set Mulcair off. On each of his first supplemental, it was a bit of a retort, but on the second, after Van Loan kept up the distraction message, Mulcair went off an angry, red-faced tangent about Canada’s place in the world, which he then tried to awkwardly segue to a question about EI changes in his last few seconds, but it just gave Van Loan more opportunity to praise Canada’s fiscal situation. That was almost too easy to goad him, really. When Peggy Nash tried to talk about why the government was worried about cuts instead of job creation, Jim Flaherty accused her of trying to delay a bill that would create jobs. Bob Rae then got up, and first schooled Jim Flaherty on how IMF transfers work before wondering why the government was so sure that Canada was such an island of fiscal stability in an interconnected global marketplace. Van Loan then recited some of John McCallum’s quotes on the European situation by means of a reply.
Tag Archives: Veterans
QP: Doing the most in the Dominion
With Stephen Harper off in London to celebrate Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee this week, it was up to Jason Kenney to hold the fort in the Commons today as designated back-up PM du jour, a post that will rotate through the front bench all week. Thomas Mulcair, back from his Alberta adventure, was up first in Question Period, and asked why the government was outsourcing its smokestack monitoring to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Kenney replied that they were doing more about air quality “than any other government in the Dominion,” and wondered why the NDP hated Barack Obama. (In the Dominion? Don’t let the Vorta hear that, or they’ll send the Jem’Hadar after you. Oh, I kid). When Mulcair made a dig about Conservative caucus members believing that volcanoes caused climate change, Kenney retorted that the only thing volcanic was Mulcair’s temper. Megan Leslie was up next asking about scrutiny of environmental changes in the omnibus budget bill, but Peter Kent worried that she wasn’t paying attention to all of the great things his government was doing for the environment, like regulations and national parks. Bob Rae was up and gave mention to the “Blackout, speak out” event on the Internet today, and worried about the government’s culture of intimidation. Kenney, in turn, implied that Rae was somehow intimidating his own party. As a final question, Rae extended the culture of intimidation question to the calls being made in Etobicoke Centre over the weekend and the attack on the judicial process therein. Kenney declared that Borys Wrzesnewskyj had no shame, as he was busy fundraising, and then brought up AdScam. Seriously.
Roundup: Gruesome deliveries
It was a grisly day in Ottawa as a severed human foot was delivered to Conservative Party headquarters, and a severed hand found in a package a few hours later at a Canada Post depot. Yikes. No explanations yet, but you can be sure that everyone is pretty creeped out about this. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a torso was discovered in a suitcase in a garbage pile in Montreal, which may or may not be related.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer says that he’s still having difficulty getting numbers on the cuts, but suspects they may be deeper than advertised.
The government has decided not to appeal the court decision on veterans benefits clawbacks. This means that the government now has hundreds of millions of dollars in pension repayments to sort out.
Roundup: Back-to-work bill on track for tonight
Expect today to be taken up with the back-to-work legislation around the CP Rail strike. Because of the way things are laid out procedurally, the vote on time allocation will take place this evening, at which point the bill will take precedence over everything and debate and votes – limited to a couple of hours – will go into the evening. It should be noted that the bill is far more fair and even-handed than previous examples under this government, according to many, though it’s still derided as an attack on the rights of workers.
As Thomas Mulcair prepares for his trip to Alberta – and Fort McMurray in particular – he’s toning down his language somewhat, while his critics out there are sharpening their own words.
Ted Opitz has appealed the overturning of the Etobicoke Centre election results to the Supreme Court at the last minute, but hasn’t exactly been clear on the grounds for the appeal. The Supreme Court is supposed to hear this without delay, and render a quick judgement, per the Elections Act.
Roundup: Back-to-work legislation ahoy!
With the negotiations at CP Rail having broken down, it looks like we’ll be seeing some fresh back-to-work legislation this week.
Joe Oliver says he’s supportive of Alison Redford’s national energy strategy idea – but he just doesn’t want to call it that. Meanwhile, this unsigned Maclean’s editorial makes a few good points about the “Dutch disease” debate, the changing manufacturing sector, and the nonsense of trying to attach environmental concerns to the economics. Stephen Gordon has even more economic data that seems to divorce the decline in our manufacturing sector from the rise in our resource economy, when compared to other major economies.
Western premiers will be meeting on Tuesday to talk about energy and environmental regulation, and it seems like Mulcair will be on that agenda as well. Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador premier Kathy Dunderdale has a bone to pick with Peter MacKay over the search-and-rescue closures in her province, and that’s only getting worse with the EI changes.
Jim Flaherty is striking a slightly more conciliatory tone around EI changes than Diane Finely has been.
There is talk that the government is exploring the idea of a standalone military procurement office, after all of the many and sundry blunders that have taken place in the past few years. One should say that if they do go ahead with this, they’re probably better off not just putting the same people in charge as the ones who’ve made the mistakes in the past – you know, like they did with the new fighter jet secretariat.
What’s that? An internal investigation of the privacy breaches at Veterans Affairs clears the department of wrongdoing? You don’t say!
What’s that? A quarter of defeated Conservative candidates have since been given public service jobs? You don’t say! Actually, this is neither that concerning nor alarming considering that most are qualified for the new jobs, and we shouldn’t get too worked up if defeated candidates get staffer positions. It’s not like opposition parties don’t give staffer jobs to their own defeated candidates at times either.
Thomas Mulcair has remortgaged his house eleven times since the early eighties, continually increasing his mortgage debt despite his MP salary, but no one will say why – even though this is a very unusual thing.
Sadly, the birth of Canada hardly rated mention in Queen Victoria’s journals. Alas!
And Tabatha Southey casts a satirical eye on the “bravery” of David Wilks and his strong stand against…his previous strong stand.
QP: Increasingly angry tangents
I’m not going to lie – it was a pretty ugly day in the Commons today. Harper wasn’t there, and everyone was in a pretty snappish mood already, after a morning full of committee shenanigans. When Thomas Mulcair started off by asking about the government getting the RCMP to launch a probe into the Globe and Mail after a story about the F-35s, James Moore – the back-up PM du jour – started off with a perfunctory “We have a responsibility to protect sensitive information,” before turning to Mulcair’s comments about the resource sector and mischaracterising those quotes as calling them a “disease” (which is not what “Dutch disease” refers to). But then Mulcair would go on a tirade defending his comments, before returning to his completely unrelated RCMP probe questions. And Moore would answer back with an attack, and Mulcair’s tirades would get increasingly angry and tangential, until he went on about the government following the development model of “Nigeria and not Norway” in a rant that was clearly not a question – not that it mattered by that point. Bob Rae toned things down a bit asking about the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’ comments about the changes to EI, and Moore, calmly, told him the changes were in the legislation. Which of course, they aren’t – the changes are dependent upon future regulation – but Rae did not lose his cool, though he did get a bit more excited on his final question – about the missing numbers of how much the OAS changes would save the treasury, but Moore simply repeated the boilerplate talking points about changes not coming until 2023.
Roundup: Scrutiny versus populist outrage
The government is backing another private members’ bill, this time about establishing a mandatory minimum sentence on kidnapping a person under 16 – despite the fact that a former Supreme Court justice calls this unnecessary and creating a more patchwork Criminal Code that increasingly is ad hoc and full of loopholes and inconsistencies. It’s like the government were going along with anything that sounded good without giving it proper thought or analysis. Oh, wait –that’s exactly what they’re doing. Who needs proper scrutiny when you’ve got populist outrage on your side?
Thomas Mulcair dismisses the premiers of Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan as “Harper’s messengers” when they go after him about his comments on the oil sands and our supposed “petro dollar.” Erm, okay. Because that makes sense. Paul Wells further dissects that particular line of thinking here.
QP: Orwell was not a how-to manual
With the NDP now out to turn public opinion to their side on the omnibus budget bill, one wondered if this was going to lead off QP for the day. And in a sort of tangential sense it did, as Thomas Mulcair asked about Jim Flaherty’s comments that OAS changes could save $10 to $12 billion. Harper insisted there would be no actual pension reductions. Mulcair then turned to Flaherty’s “there are no bad jobs” comments with regards to EI changes – and several times was drowned out by Conservative applause when he repeated Flaherty’s statement. (And yet he kept repeating it and kept getting drowned out). After a warning from the Speaker, Mulcair finished and between that and two follow-up questions about how that also applied to seniors and the disabled, Harper insisted that Canada has a superior job creation record, and hey, they have a disabled member in the cabinet, so there’s nothing that disabled people can’t do. Bob Rae was up next, and brought up George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and how it shouldn’t be a how-to manual for governments, and he related this to the kind of silencing of critics the government has been engaged in, whether it is with the National Round Table on Environment and the Economy, or any other number of NGOs or data-gathering organisations. Harper insisted that they were interested in administrative savings and doing away with duplication where the information these groups provide could be found elsewhere. For his final supplemental, Rae gave a nod to the Auditor General’s return to the Public Accounts committee and his assertion that the government wasn’t giving accurate numbers on the F-35s. Harper turned to his rote talking points about no contracts signed and no purchase having been made, and left it at that.
QP: Playing coy during negotiations
Despite the fact that negotiations are apparently ongoing, Thomas Mulcair nevertheless opened QP today with a pair of questions about whether the government would split the omnibus budget implementation bill. Harper, however, played coy and spoke instead about the strong mandate that his party received and their desire to move forward. Mulcair then turned to the Environment Commissioner’s report and how the list of failures there would be compounded with the aforementioned budget bill, but Harper rebutted that his government had made record investments in environmental remediation. Megan Leslie picked up the torch and asked about the hidden costs of not having strict environmental legislation, but Peter Kent assured her that when the costing data was available they’d share it. Marc Garneau led off for the Liberals and demanded that Kent account for his “money laundering” accusations, but rather than Kent speaking up, both Harper and Gail Shea got up instead – Harper to tout Responsible Resource Development™ and the responsible use of charitable dollars, and Shea to insist those budget measures were about greater education and transparency for charities. Kirsty Duncan took the last slot to also ask after the Environment Commissioner’s report, and Kent assured her that they would “take note” of the recommendations.
Roundup: Truth and ministerial accountability
As mentioned earlier, the Speaker has ruled that there was no prima facia breach of privilege in the government’s answers on the F-35s in the House. So what does this actually mean. First of all, it should be noted that Speaker Scheer parsed things pretty finely, and in that respect, noted that it was difficult to prove a deliberate misleading, which is why he couldn’t make his ruling. (You can read the text here). Fair enough, one supposes, but there were some additional eyebrow-raising aspects to this, in that he pretty much dismissed the notion of ministerial accountability out of hand. In other words, not his problem. This means that as always, this remains a problem for the Crown, and in that, it means that the only people who can punish the Crown for ministers not taking responsibility would be the Commons, by means of withdrawing their confidence. And of course that would mean in this case that backbenchers would have to be sufficiently exercised to want to punish their own party’s government (which this current lot of spineless louts is highly unlikely to do). Marc Garneau raised the additional point after the ruling that this further insulates a government from the actions of the civil servant because they can henceforth claim ignorance, and ministerial accountability may well be a past concept.
Here is the text of the motion the NDP are proposing for splitting the omnibus budget bill. Elizabeth May blogs about the various changes found within the bill and wonders if government spokespersons haven’t read the bill considering that their talking points don’t match the reality of the text. Maclean’s Aaron Wherry has an extremely trying interview with Peter Van Loan about the bill, and his justifying the omnibus-ness of it all.
The Veterans Ombudsman has released a scathing report about the conduct and performance of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, saying some 60 percent of cases were handled improperly. The minister’s response? That they’ll soon be launching a new Action Plan™ to deal with it.
The NDP “digital issues” critic wants to investigate if social media sites are doing enough to protect privacy. Fair enough – but I don’t think that labelling them “Big Data” is really helping anyone.
Here’s a look at the number of contaminated sites that need cleaning up across the country.
And a potential Liberal leadership candidate is launching trailers for his “exploratory committee” bid, but there are cautions about what kind of fundraising he can actually do at this stage.
Up today – the Mental Health Commission is releasing their first report, outlining their strategy, priorities and recommendations, which includes the need for $4 billion in new funds over the next ten years.