Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Stephen Maher nicely summarizes Tony Clement's sad committee appearance yesterday:

The evidence shows that Clement chose the projects himself, in some kind of mysterious process in his riding office. He has steadfastly denied that, and even helpfully pointed out to reporters in September why that would have been wrong.

“If I was the decision-maker, if I had set up a parallel process — and created a situation where the auditor general did not know, that’s their accusation — I’d be resigning right now and turning myself into the local police office.”

Clement’s logic is plain: since choosing the projects himself would have been wrong, he obviously did not do so. He must deny it, forever and with great sincerity, which is what he spent Wednesday doing.
...
New Democrat MP Charlie Angus, the fiery former punk singer from Timmins, Ont., made a strong argument on Wednesday that Clement should get a new assignment.

“This is about your fundamental competence,” he said. “It gets to the question of how you do business, when the auditor general says you broke the rules.”

Clement — who is now president of the Treasury Board, the minister in charge of interpreting and administering the spending rules for the federal government — admitted he made mistakes.

“The auditor general said she was concerned about the lack of documentation,” he said. “I take that to heart. The paperwork for this was not perfect.”

“Not perfect?” Angus interrupted, incredulous. “It doesn’t exist.”

“I take my share of responsibility for that and certainly I have learned that there are different ways and better ways to provide these kinds of intake processes, and I commit myself to using them,” said Clement.

Angus was not mollified.

“When people started asking questions, you said, ‘I’m sorry, the dog ate my homework. I’ll do better the next time.’ What are you doing at Treasury Board?”

It’s a good question.

- Meanwhile, Vic Toews helped Clement out by offering his own jaw-droppingly ignorant spin, criticizing the NDP's Joe Comartin for having acted as a defence lawyer.

- Yes, it's true enough that a series of provincial elections likely cut into the federal NDP's fund-raising efforts. But I'd still think the third-quarter numbers present a clear indication that the party has a long way to go in making sure that its fund-raising and other member involvement catch up to its vote and seat totals - and we'll have to keep a close eye on how the numbers change over the next two quarters when the base should be fully involved.

- Finally, Paul Gingrich examines the state of post-secondary education costs in Saskatchewan, and finds that the Sask Party's tuition hikes have undone much of the good accomplished by the NDP' previous freeze.