Just ponder what we'd be hearing if Iran had raided a humanitarian ship in international waters and killed 15 or so civilians aboard.Recommend this Post
Besides, there are culture wars within culture wars, some of which actually unite conservatives and their mortal enemies. For example, our politicians in Ottawa seem to live in an impermeable bubble of their own. The quite extraordinary spectacle of almost all members of Parliament indignantly refusing to make public their expenses speaks volumes about the distance between the political world and the real one.Recommend this Post
The fact that the NDP has been the most intransigent in its righteous determination to keep the public's nose out of its accounts has bewildered the faithful across the land. What are they thinking? What are they hiding? Have they learned nothing from the Labour Party's humiliation caught charging the state for personal expenses? Has the culture of "The Hill" corrupted (with a few honorable exceptions) the entire caucus?
It's hard not to see the NDP position on this issue as a betrayal of what the party stands for. Add to this that about a third of the caucus may for the second time vote against the long-gun registry. This would, of course, confuse the culture warriors because the NDP would then be standing with the Harper government and its supporters – Canada's own equivalent of the National Rifle Association. These positions will surely test the loyalty of the 14 per cent to 18 per cent of Canadians who faithfully vote NDP, knowing it will not form a government.
On both counts, frantic efforts are being made to make this rogue NDP caucus come to its collective senses. But the fact such efforts are necessary at all tells its own dismal story.
The Harper government turned its back on advice from its own civil servants when it excluded abortion funding in its G8 maternal- and child-health initiative, The Canadian Press has learned.I am sure Minister Oda would be glad to go in front of a committee to defend ignoring the advice of her officials. Bev? Bev? Recommend this Post
Liberals, who hit 25 per cent in public opinion last week, are not happy with Grit Leader Michael Ignatieff, but his leadership is surviving on life support because as things stand there is no viable candidate who could take his place, say Liberal sources.Really? No one, or just no one acceptable to the blues? H/t to the Jurist. Recommend this Post
Given the example set by Human Resources Minister Diane Finley -- who made a surprise appearance at the very same committee a few weeks back, during which she made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to field questions on behalf of her director of communications, Ryan Sparrow -- would it not be reasonable and logical to expect the prime minister to do the very same thing on Tuesday morning, when -- by sheer coincidence, I'm sure -- Soudas himself is -- or was -- supposed to go before the Ethics committee to discuss alleged interference in Acess to Information requests?Kady is so cute, "soon to be delivered detainee-related documents". We should live so long. Maybe the opposition will "stand up" to the PM again and have a group of "eminent jurists" vet any potential list of witnesses. I am sure the PM will "bend" to another show of "parliamentary supremacy". Really, the PM knows the opposition is composed of wieners and is acting accordingly. He knows when push comes to shove -- well it never does come to shove, does it? The opposition always runs away, screaming in terror of an election. Recommend this Post
It was, after all, Stephen Harper, not his communications director, who, as the latter explains it, "ran for office/accepted the role and responsibilities of being [prime] minister, including being accountable to and answering questions in parliament." He wouldn't want to send the message that he is less willing to take responsibility for the actions of his staff than his own minister, would he?
There are, of course, some annoying parliamentary traditionalists out there -- including the one behind this keyboard -- who will point out that, although this latest tactic may get full marks for procedural chutzpah, it is, alas, completely unenforceable, since Parliament has the power to send for persons, papers and records. We just went through all that with those soon-to-be-delivered detainee-related documents, so really, there's no excuse for this apparent outburst of cabinet-wide amnesia forgetfulness. (emphasis mine)
By their own admission, pro-choice Conservative MPs voted against the Liberal motion on the basis of its wording, not its intent. A number of pro-choice Liberals were also absent for the vote on their party’s motion.So, as usual, the message from the PMO is "Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?" Recommend this Post
But in a future Parliament dominated by a Conservative majority, the outcome might be different. And if a prime minister is to be judged by his deeds rather than by his words, one should not count on Harper to stand against the anti-abortion tide of his caucus.
While the Prime Minister continues to maintain that he has no desire to wade back into the abortion debate, his government’s actions on the maternal health front are rightly seen by the Canadian anti-abortion lobby as its biggest victory in decades.
“We’ll get government out of our personal lives, our homes, our fridges, our backyards and, yes, our wallets,” said the rookie PC leader, who took the party helm last June, succeeding the more centrist John Tory. (emphasis mine)
Gladwell, who was raised in southwestern Ontario, spoke at the “Imaging Ontario's Future” conference at the Blue Mountain resort here.Recommend this Post
“I was very grateful this invitation came from you and not the Tories,” he joked. “Otherwise my mother would have disowned me.”
Gladwell, whose books include The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, is a graduate of the University of Toronto's Trinity College.
He spoke of making the case for a “new kind of liberalism” and the importance of a proactive government with a clear message and agenda.
The all-party agreement tabled Friday implicitly recognizes that both sides of this war of words have real merit. The agreement is that an all-party committee of four MPs -- one for each party in Parliament -- and four designates will be sworn to secrecy and given access to some 10,000 pages of documents. They will review them and decide which should be released to a parliamentary committee and which remain secret. Where disputes occur, disputed documents will be submitted to a panel of three jurists, to be agreed among the parties, who will then make a final decision.Both sides of the argument have merit, regardless of what the Speaker's ruling said. The opposition parties were wise to back down from the position of the Speaker's ruling and bend to the will of the government. Everyone is happy there is no election over something as stupid as the idea of Parliamentary supremacy. These are now the official truths of our betters. Anyone who disagrees with this narrative does so at the peril of being ridiculed as "not serious".
The opposition, of course, could have demanded absolute control of the review and releases -- Jack Layton, in fact, blustered that he would settle for nothing less -- but they didn't. That they didn't was a sign that, more than anything, they didn't want to be seen as overplaying their hand and triggering an election that nobody wants.
It was revealed this week that she [Candice Hoeppner] is sending letters to individual homes in the ridings of the eight Liberal MPs who voted in favour of scrapping the registry. “Dear Friend,” she begins, and goes on to explain that Mr. Ignatieff is “forcing” their MP to support the registry after they did the “right thing” on second reading by voting with her.And yet, these same whining losers are expecting this government to live up to the spirit of the agreement on the detainee documents. As P.T. Barnum once said, "There is a sucker born every minute". To which I would only add, "When they grow up they graduate to the opposition benches in Ottawa". Recommend this Post
Her letter is a clever way around the recent ban on the use of taxpayer-funded partisan flyers called “10 per centers.”
In mid-March, MPs – with the exception of the Conservatives – supported a Liberal motion to abolish the practice of mailing the partisan pamphlets to voters outside of their ridings.
It was deemed too expensive, the flyers too aggressively partisan; estimates were the practice cost up to $10-million each year.
There is a view among some opposition MPs that her letter-writing campaign goes against the spirit of the ban.
She disagrees: “I have completely complied with the rules of the House.” She says she has sent between 500 and 800 letters to people in the eight Liberal ridings who have indicated to her they are interested in the issue. (Taxpayers are picking up the tab for the postage – 57 cents a letter.)
The Harper government and opposition parties have agreed in principle to use a panel of outside experts to referee disputes over whether secret Afghan detainee records can be made public after being shown to select MPs.How much do you want to bet the Harperites will challenge every document that comes before them, as a means to drag this process out for, well, forever? It is their way. They will live up to the letter of the agreement. Period (and only if they feel it gives them political advantage). With the Harperites, there is no such thing as the "spirit" of anything. Opposition beware, you are being suckered, again.
Where the Committee determines that such information is both relevant and necessary, or upon the request of any member of the Committee, it will refer the document to a Panel of Arbiters who will determine how that relevant and necessary information will be made available to Members of Parliament and the public without compromising national security - either by redaction or the writing of summaries or such techniques as the Panel find appropriate, hearing in mind the basic objectives of maximizing disclosure and transparency.(italics mine)It seems to me that the opposition has given the government a suspensive veto (which it will use with wild abandon, mark my words) and has allowed the government the opportunity to move the final decision away from elected members to an unelected "panel of experts". This is a shocking capitulation by the opposition.
If not now, when? For the first time the prize is within grasp. The people have spoken – and none of the above won. Radical reform to an electoral system that has fallen apart is at last on offer. The deadly duopoly between two moribund parties has broken. But will it be cobbled together again as if nothing had happened?I won't get too excited about this. I have seen this movie far too often for that. I will just say that I hope electoral reform does come to the U.K. No one (except us) deserves a functioning electoral system more. Recommend this Post
Industry Minister Tony Clement insisted Friday the decision has nothing to do with anti-gay sentiment among some members of the ruling Conservative caucus.Everyone with a brain knows that "smaller centres" means Conservative ridings. Why is no one asking why this money is being used as as a Conservative slush fund, much as the Sponsorship Fund was by the Liberals? Recommend this Post
Rather, he said the government decided to fund fewer events in major cities this year so it can spread the money around more equitably to smaller centres. (emphasis mine)
Mr. Speaker, this government wants to ensure that the G8 initiative is actually going to get results.I noticed how narrowly and carefully the Minister framed her response. That always gets my bullshit detector flashing red. I went to the website as she suggested and found this page which outlines the U.S. policy on abortions overseas. I draw your attention specifically to the rescinding of the Mexico City Policy. The U.S. government allows USAID to fund organizations that carry out abortions, as long as the funding for abortions comes from non-U.S. government sources. So, unlike in Canada where it appears our government is cutting off any agency that provides abortions for any reason, regardless of the source of funding, the U.S. is going a different route. Canada is going the Mexico City Policy route which, like all things Republican, is more in line with the thinking of the Conservative Party's base.
What I want to ensure is that that side of the House has done its homework. If members go to the U.S.A. website, they will find that the U.S.A. does not support the funding of equipment, the training of people who perform abortions, and neither does it support research into abortion.
They should do their homework. We know the facts and we know how to really make a difference in the lives of mothers and children.
I wish for a turkey sandwich on rye bread with lettuce and mustard. And... and I don't want any zombie turkeys, I don't want to turn into a turkey myself, and I don't want any other weird surprises, you got it?And so it appeared that Homer got his way, but upon tasting it, he found the turkey was dry! Homer was screwed again. That is what I imagine the opposition is up against during their negotiations with the Harperites. You just know that the opposition will come out with what they think is a agreement from the government to disclose the documents, only to discover that the Harperites have found a loophole allowing them to screw them again. With the Harperites, there are no "good faith negotiations", only battles of wits. I just hope the opposition has the sense to see that. Recommend this Post
And what if the Harper government rejects both of these options? Simple: the opposition should bring a motion holding it in contempt of Parliament and Canada's Constitution. Since that could trigger an election, the opposition needs to design its contempt motion to benefit at the polls, while communicating the government's untrustworthiness and incompetence in the war itself.Not that Harper cares about breaking his word. The man is a pathological word breaker, but it would be interesting to see how he would handle the idea that since he did not live up to his word on the mission in Afghanistan, the agreement is null and void.
In March 2008, Harper sought Parliament's conditional consent to extend the Afghanistan combat mission to 2011. Parliament gave consent, but only because Harper's motion contained a requirement that "the government must commit to a policy of greater transparency with respect to its policy on ... detainees."
Now, with Harper breaking his own condition and hiding the detainee documents from Parliament, he is inviting Parliament to place the combat mission back on the table. Thus when the opposition introduces a motion finding the government in contempt, that should also recall Harper's March 2008 motion, and revoke Parliament's consent to the combat mission extending through 2011. Harper will howl, but he linked "greater transparency" to the combat mission's continuance in the first place.
Done this way, Harper will fear making the contempt motion a confidence matter, because if he precipitated an election, the Conservatives would be isolated as the only party backing an unpopular war. This they cannot afford: over half of Canadians polled oppose the war. And more will soon oppose it, once the summer fighting resumes, bloodier this year because of more aggressive American tactics in Kandahar.
In sum: negotiate, as the Speaker asked. Aim for compromise on a public inquiry or secret House session, but rule out lesser options, because the underlying issues -- Canada's Constitution, and mismanagement of the war -- are too serious. If negotiation fails, bring on the contempt motion, and tie it to Harper violating his own conditions for extending the combat mission. If that triggers an election, fine, then confront Harper on his record of risking Canadian soldiers' lives, under an appalling detainee policy he stubbornly defends.Recommend this Post
