Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Geoffrey Stevens discusses the basic problem behind the Cons' insistence on cutting back actual help to people while wasting billions on prisons and fighter jets:

(I)f the government did have a weakness (which, as noted, it does not concede), it might be that it does not suffer fools gladly — “fools” being loosely defined as anyone who fails to applaud everything the Conservatives do. This is quite a large category, encompassing (or so pollsters tell us) two-thirds of the Canadian populace.

Not only does the government not embrace criticism, it does not trust experts. The overhaul of the old age security system that Harper announced, minus details, in Davos (safely removed from the fools in Parliament) illustrates the point. As Harper sees it, the changes — which apparently will require seniors to wait longer and accept smaller pensions — are needed to make OAS sustainable for future generations. But is that really the case?

Non-partisan experts argue that if the Conservatives factor in economic growth and increases in the working-age population though immigration, they will discover a quite different picture, and not a bleak one at all. One of those experts is Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer (and a troublesome fellow in Tory eyes) “We don’t have a long-term sustainability problem,” Page says. “I think he (Harper) is doing it for broader problems.”

Common sense would suggest that the Conservatives acknowledge that independent experts just might have a point worth considering (by a royal commission perhaps?). At very least, the public deserves a more convincing explanation and some reassurance before the best finance minister on the planet attacks a pension system that has served the country well over the years.

- Bea Vongdouangchonh reports on Joe Comartin's efforts to make Parliament more open and democratic.

- Sixth Estate laments the embarrassment of riches in trying to choose a single weekly Flack Award.

- Last week's column looks to have been particularly well-timed, as word gets out that the Wall government is trying to recruit some of the same people taken in by Ireland's false promise of an economy built on corporate giveaways to help build a similar set of bubbles in Saskatchewan.

- Finally, kudos to the team of labour activists which succeeded in demonstrating that the Wall government's essential services legislation was unconstitutional. And Murray Mandryk nicely sums up how Justice Ball's findings that the Sask Party's essential services legislation was the most draconian in the country serve to undermine the Wall government's pretense at moderation.

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.

Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Aaron Wherry takes a look at how the NDP caucus has responded to Jack Layton's death and the resulting outpouring of public sympathy:

After Jack Layton had departed Parliament Hill for the final time last week, his flag-draped casket loaded into a waiting hearse and driven away as a large crowd applauded, those NDP MPs who had gathered to see him off fanned out to greet and thank the well-wishers and mourners. “What I kept on saying to people over and over again,” says Libby Davies, one of Layton’s two deputy leaders, “without even thinking, it was just instinct, was, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to keep working.’ ”

While they mourned their leader, New Democrats could hardly ignore the many questions left in his absence: about their viability, direction and meaning as a party without the man who seemed to define them. But if, in the wake of Layton’s passing, there was a certain fear for the future of the NDP—raised by any number of pundits who now deem the party doomed—New Democrats themselves claim only resolve.
...
A sense of solidarity was already said to have taken hold amid the June filibuster that delayed passage of back-to-work legislation for Canada Post employees. The loss of their leader and inspiration is now said to have united the caucus all the more. “When you go through a tragedy like this—it’s that old saying, ‘What doesn’t kill you is going to make you stronger,’ ” says Comartin. And in this case, there is, strengthening that resolve, a clear sense of responsibility. “Every single caucus member that I’ve spoken to, there’s the same absolute, resolute feeling that we are united, that we’re together, that we have to carry on Jack’s work,” says Davies.

When it came time for McGrath to sign one of the books of condolences for her departed boss—a man she had spoken to nearly every day for the last three years—she chose to put her commitment in writing. “I love you, I miss you, I know what you want from us,” she wrote, “and we’re going to do it, you can count on us.”

- And Linda McQuaig notes that Stephen Lewis' eulogy has resonated well beyond the NDP's caucus and membership:

Allowing Layton a state funeral was probably Stephen Harper's most generous prime ministerial act. But it led to a nationally televised scene that will likely haunt him and surely inspire progressives for years to come: Stephen Lewis, the iconic elder statesman of Canada's social democratic movement, standing in front of Canada's most right-wing prime minister ever, speaking truth to power.

Determined that the event be more than just a tribute to the goodness of one man, Lewis used the heft of the occasion, as Layton would have wanted, to drive home Layton's social democratic vision for the country.

With the Conservatives' new hammerlock on power — accomplished with a mere 40 per cent of the national vote — here at least was one joyous moment in which we could watch the country's most powerful orator confront a prime minister who had no choice but to stand every time the rest of the room rose in rapturous pleasure at Lewis's inspiring call for a more equal and generous Canada.

- Meanwhile, Erika Shaker theorizes as to the source of the Cons' constant rage:

I think the rage comes from a place of fear. I think the Conservative bunker mentality requires their constant vigilance to squash anything that vaguely resembles a differing point of view, or even a reminder that although the election is over, the opposition is not going away. Because when that opposition is coherent, passionate, and persuasive, and is accompanied by action…that’s when things get scary. Particularly when those unpredictable youth are involved.

And when political awareness and action is an ongoing process rather than the equivalent of something that resembles a cross between Groundhog Day and Leap Year (you know, when Canadians crawl out of their houses once every four years, haul themselves down to the polls to do their civic duty, then return home to shake their collective heads about how the old boss looks an awful lot like the new boss…but hey, whatareyagonnado?); when those whose sense of order relies on low voter turnout and an uninformed electorate realize that, for a lot of people, democracy is a way of life and not just a spectator sport….then it’s time to panic.
...
(Layton's) vision as he articulated it was powerful; it resonated because it felt authentic, and because it was expressed authentically. His closing sentence has already become a mantra because it speaks to a vision of Canada, a way of life, and a set of priorities that people see in their best selves. Within hours, love, hope and optimism blew the “Conservative Values are Canadian Values” ad campaign out of the political and social water.
...
Words to strike fear into the hearts of those who like their politics predictable, their youth apathetic, and their worldview uncomplicated by all this “making a difference” or “democracy is a way of life” nonsense. And I think being confronted with a different set of political and social principles that resonates deeply and authentically among a variety of communities only feeds the fear that drives the fury.

- Finally, Nik Nanos points out both why any talk of an NDP/Lib merger misses both the impossibility of completely combining the two parties, and the lack of any particular need to do so.

Tuesday Evening Links

This and that to end your Tuesday.

- The Ottawa Citizen tears a strip off the Cons' G8 patronage and cover-up:

The more details emerge about the way the government funnelled money into the Muskoka region under the convenient category of "G8 legacy infrastructure," the more "smalltown cheap" the whole thing looks.
...
In a sense, none of this money was theirs to spend. Parliament approved the funding under the mistaken impression that it was for border infrastructure.

In a larger sense, the government never had any business throwing public money around like this. Yes, municipalities were and are in sore need of a better model for infrastructure funding. But using an international summit as a tenuous excuse to create a oneoff, regional fund is not a good way to accomplish that goal. It's a good way to create the circumstances for cronyism and waste.

- And even Kelly McParland is less than impressed:

Now we discover, thanks to some innovative digging by the NDP, that Mr. Clement took personal command of the $50 million, setting up a command centre in his riding headquarters, creating a mini-council consisting of himself, the mayor of Huntsville and a local resort manager to sift through projects and pick the ones they liked. He convened meetings with area mayors to get input, dragged in bureaucrats from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Industry Canada, and Infrastructure Canada, and managed to avoid leaving a paper trail that might prove embarrassing if someone started poking their nose into his activities later.

Someone did start sniffing around — Auditor General Sheila Fraser — but even her formidable investigative skills missed the extent of what Clement was up to, or the fact he had the bureaucrats helping him out. And without supporting documentation, which seem be mysteriously absent, the Auditor General couldn’t tell whether projects were suitably chosen or not.

It’s not the way things are supposed to be done. The government isn’t supposed to just hand $50 million to a local MP and tell him to pick some projects for it. There’s red tape to be dealt with, and not all of it unnecessarily. There are standards and procedures to be satisfied when spending taxpayers’ dollars, and the whole Clement operation seems to have been organized to get around them.
...
Cover-up. Slush fund, Secret committee. No paper trail. All we need is Howard Hunt, a hidden tape machine and a trail of dirty campaign tricks and we could have a real scandal here.

- And pogge reminds us that it isn't Tony Clement that nominally approved the Cons' G8 spending - meaning that John Baird has plenty to answer for as well.

- Aaron Wherry painstakingly lists the topics for which the Cons have claimed a mandate from May's election. But for a next step, let's note that multiple topics on the list (attacking Air Canada workers, slashing the civil service, and cutting search and rescue operations as prime examples) are issues which were mentioned approximately zero times as part of the campaign which the Cons claim to have provided them with that mandate.

- Finally, Joe Comartin signals that the NDP is looking to point out how the Cons' disdain for evidence and rational policy-making conflicts with the values of Canada's legal community:

Joe Comartin says the country’s lawyers and judges are “offended professionally” by the Harper government’s law-and-order agenda, which is prohibiting any changes to its mandatory minimum sentencing legislation.

“They find this offensive as lawyers,” the NDP justice critic told The Globe. “The evidence is overwhelming this is the wrong approach. ... [Lawyers are] just so offended that they are shifting the criminal justice system as dramatically as it should be. They are offended professionally the government would do this.”
...
Lawyers at the CBA meeting were strong in their condemnation of the government’s tough-on-crime agenda, and its position on sentencing. And Mr. Comartin, a former defence lawyer, said past governments would consult with the legal profession if significant changes were being proposed. This one, he says, does not.
...
He added that the NDP continues to oppose the proposed legislation, pushing prevention rather than punishment and “knowing this is the most effective way to protect our citizens.”

Parliament In Review: June 16, 2011

While June 16 was a shortened day due to the NDP's weekend convention, it wasn't lacking for a few notes of interest.

Issue of the Day

While the Cons took the opportunity to serve notice of their intention to impose back-to-work legislation at Air Canada, the NDP's focus on pensions offered an ideal response - encapsulated in Jack Layton's question which of course received a typical non-response from Stephen Harper:

The government should not be getting involved so early on in the process and picking winners. The workers are currently fighting to protect their pensions. They do not have a choice, because the government did not do what was necessary to strengthen and protect the retirement pensions of workers here in Canada.

Why does the government want to impose a pension model that leaves people to fend for themselves?

Meanwhile, the Cons seem to have somewhat anticipated the issue, using one of their members' statements to criticize the NDP for having an interest in improving the Canada Pension Plan. No word yet on their progress in excising all references to Jim Flaherty proposing exactly the same thing.

Cooperation Runs Amok

The day saw several outbreaks of civility in various forms - including a round of mutual back-patting on the mega-trials bill which all parties agreed to pass, and Elizabeth May asking a question to enable Irwin Cotler to finish a speech which got cut off. But the spirit may have gone a bit too far in a round of "points of order" which were nothing of the sort in response to the news of an Air Canada settlement.

In Brief

Within the debate on the mega-trials bill, Joe Comartin took the opportunity to point out the Cons' habit of trotting out the same victims of crime on multiple occasions in support of legislation they themselves kept from passing. Peggy Nash introduced a private members' bill against animal cruelty. And the Cons offered some signal as to how they plan to deal with the NDP's ascent to Official Opposition status: by simply whiting out "Liberal" and replacing it with "NDP" in repeating their stale attacks.

On appeals to conscience

The Libs have long since concluded that they can't afford to allow MPs to think for themselves, and are obviously doing their utmost to impose the same standard on the NDP. But it's funny what one can accomplish by actually working with one's MPs rather than simply eliminating their free will:

Speaking on Tuesday in a panel interview on Power & Politics with Evan Solomon, NDP Justice critic Joe Comartin said he was "hopeful" that enough of his colleagues from rural and northern ridings would vote against Hoeppner's bill if the NDP's proposed legislation failed to pass in time.

"At this point … we're very close to having enough of them say to C-391: 'This is not the way to go,' [to] say to the country, 'There's a way of reaching a compromise here that will be acceptable to the vast majority of Canadians'," Comartin said.

"So, I expect that, in fact, we, ultimately, are going to defeat C-391 — unless we can reach the compromise before we reach that stage."

What's more, at least one of the NDP's MPs who voted for C-391 at second reading has signalled his plans in legendary fashion. And all by thinking for himself rather than taking orders from on high.

Of course, we'll have to see whether Comartin proves to be right, as the national debate over the registry plays out within the only party that trusts its MPs to exercise competent judgment. But yes, that sound you hear is the Libs frantically changing their travel plans - lest what they thought would be a chance to score political points over a whipped vote turn all the more obviously into the Epic Fail Express.

Epilogue

Last week, I pointed out Joe Comartin's valiant attempt to make sure that the Cons couldn't ram through a bill by refusing to provide information they'd promised to the opposition parties - as well as the subsequent disappointment when the Libs voted to rush the bill through anyway. Well, the story seems to have come to a close with an admission that generally looks to have been noticed nowhere other than on the pages of Hansard:

Hon. Peter Van Loan (Minister of Public Safety, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, I am rising in response to a point of privilege that was raised by the member for Windsor—Tecumseh related to information that he sought at parliamentary committee from the head of the Correctional Service of Canada, Mr. Don Head. This information was to be conveyed by Mr. Head on a timely basis for consideration before the matter was dealt with in Parliament. It was provided to my office. It was conveyed to the hon. member and to others. However, that was not done on the timely basis it should have been done. There is in fact no good reason why it was not done on a timely basis, and for that reason I come before you to apologize unreservedly to the member for Windsor—Tecumseh and to the House for the failure to provide those documents. While he did have them early enough, they were not conveyed in the proper fashion and it should have been done properly and I apologize for that.

Now, Van Loan conspicuously avoided saying when the documents actually were passed along, or offering any explanation as to why they were sent to his office for vetting in the first place. But at the very least, Van Loan's statement yesterday confirms that the Cons' failure to provide promised information prevented the opposition from doing its job in properly vetting the bill.

Unfortunately, that also offers a signal that the Libs' decision reflects an abdication of their own role in holding the government to account for wrongs that even the Cons can't avoid acknowledging now. Indeed, if anything the Libs' actions send a signal that the Cons are better off covering up everything they can in the short term and daring the opposition parties to do anything about it, rather than allowing anybody on opposition benches to do their job in the first place. And it shouldn't come as much surprise if the Cons end up stonewalling even more than they might have otherwise on the Afghan detainee file and other issues as a result.

Update: Fixed timeline - it seemed longer than a week ago that the issue first arose, but apparently not.

Sigh

I suppose I should have known that follow-through on a reasonable, principled stance to push back against blatant Con abuses was more than we could expect - and apparently the Cons were somehow allowed to ram C-36 through the House of Commons after suppressing information promised to opposition committee members. I have my suspicions based on the numbers involved, but can anybody confirm who it was that joined the Cons in voting against Comartin's motion?

Update: As a reader notes in comments, the final vote is here - with Paul Szabo apparently the lone Liberal to vote with the NDP and Bloc in favour of Comartin's motion.

On pushback

With nearly all of the attention paid to the House of Commons focusing on question period, it seems like there's some rather important information that's falling through the cracks. So let's take some time to note what happened yesterday on one of the Cons' posturing-on-crime bills - and what it figures to mean going forward.

Here's the background to a motion presented by NDP MP Joe Comartin:

Following my own and the Bloc's representations on the justice committee, we had arranged for the head of the Correctional Service of Canada to appear before the committee, because we were told by Juristat and the office of the Minister of Justice that correctional service staff were the only ones who could answer factually some of the questions we had raised.

We arranged for Mr. Don Head to appear before the committee. He came before the committee without anything prepared and took questions, including a series of questions from me and the member from the Bloc. In the course of that questioning, it became clear that the information was not compiled in any way. For instance, he could not tell us how many victims' families had asked to make a victim's statement and he could not tell us the specifics of the recidivism rate. He only had generalities that he could talk a bit about to us. He could not tell us at what ages most people were convicted and most individuals got out of prison.

We could go down the list. There were at least a half dozen very specific points that he confirmed the Correctional Service of Canada could give us answers on. He said to me and the member from the Bloc and the chair of the committee that the information could and would be available by the time we got to clause by clause consideration of the bill, scheduled for November 16. Mr. Head appeared before the committee on November 4. It was very clear that he could do it in that period of time.

The week of November 9 was a break week for the House to commemorate Remembrance Day in our ridings, but we were back on November 16. I asked where the information from the Correctional Service of Canada was so that we could do clause by clause in a meaningful way. I was told it had been sent to our offices.

I have subsequently learned that other members of the committee, both from the Bloc and the Liberal Party, with similar questions about where it was were told the same thing. We all jumped to the conclusion that somehow we had missed that information in our offices, and so we went ahead with clause by clause. The bill went through committee stage and, of course, it is now back in the House for report stage and third reading.

After November 16, I again told the clerk that I did not have the information in my office and asked if it could be sent to my office again. Yesterday morning when I arrived at my office, it was not there. We called again at that point and were advised that in fact it had never been sent either to my office or to anyone on the committee, because it had been sent to the office of the Minister of Public Safety and that it had at least been there by November 16.

That information was never provided to the committee. The committee went ahead with clause by clause without all of that factual information, which was our only source of such information.

Yesterday, I was advised by the Conservative deputy House leader that in fact the minister had that information on his desk and had not seen or approved it. I have to say as a sidebar that he has no right to approve it; this is not a situation where he gets to vet that information. If committees are going to work in the House, they must have access to information without it being censored, deleted or affected in any other way by the decisions of the political masters in our legislature.

I still do not have the information. I had wanted it yesterday, as I had expected to speak on this bill then and to use some of data to try to convince the House to vote against this bill. I still do not have it. I was advised by the Conservative deputy House leader yesterday that I might get it in another week.

We know that if that happens, this bill is going to come to a vote before we ever get the information, and I am certainly not going to be able to use it today in my arguments for why we should defeat this bill. The minister should not have done that.

Of course, the theme of Con secrecy (with its variations related to timing the disclosure of documents after it's too late for them to matter, the civil service being co-opted for Con political strategies, and Cons interposing themselves between the public service and others entitled to information) is a fairly familiar one. But this looks like a fairly striking example which manages to have gone entirely unreported.

Which is particularly a shame since the opposition parties appear to have come up with an effective countermove. Comartin presented a motion to deal with the Cons' bill on the faint hope clause:

I move that:

Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for the purpose of reconsidering Clauses 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 with a view to making any amendments which may be called for as a result of information undertaken to be placed before the Committee by departmental officials on November 4th, but which the office of the Minister of Public Safety failed to provide before the Committee considered the Bill at clause-by-clause.

Comartin's motion is set to be voted on today. And assuming the opposition parties all support it, it would seem to be at least a start in sending a message that the Cons can't simply delay and deny their way out of proper debate on their policies.

Waiting for the miracle

A few Libs seem all too happy to use exactly the same kind of highly selective quoting and repetition of press spin against the NDP that they regularly decry when it's working against their party. So let's highlight the most important part of what the NDP in fact has to say, with the part of Joe Comartin's statement that they're leaving out:

"It's absolutely necessary that the Conservatives make some very important compromises," said the NDP MP. "If they don't change their economic policy, we won't be able to support them."

If there's been a change in the NDP's tone, it's in suggesting that there's some meaningful chance that the Cons might now consider governing more responsibly in order to stay in power where the Libs left them no reason to do so before. And I'll grant that the line taken by both Comartin and Thomas Mulcair is more optimistic on that point than I am: I'd think it would be better at this point to stick with the previous terminology that it would require a miracle for the Cons to do so and let them try to take steps to make it happen, rather than creating even the slightest space for a desperate Lib party to invent a narrative which casts the NDP as taking over the role the Libs have occupied for so long.

But the NDP's basic position that Con government in the form we've seen for the past three and a half years isn't acceptable remains the same - leaving only the question of whether Harper is willing to change how he governs in order to retain the ability to do so. And while it looks like the Cons prefer to put the onus back on the Libs to keep allowing them to govern without compromising at all, one can't rule out the possibility that a miracle will happen.

Update: Megan Leslie is closer to the right message (though I'd work on the example of what would have to happen for Harper's direction to change):

"We clearly haven’t supported the vision of the Conservatives. Absolutely," said Ms. Leslie. "But were there to be a huge change in that vision, who knows? I think there’s room to stop and think about what is best right now. But it’s the Harper vision that we can’t support. Who knows? Maybe he’ll fall on his head and have a new vision."

Update II: Apparently no miracle is forthcoming. Which is just fine: thanks to the Cons' over-the-top refusal to even talk about cooperating, the NDP both preserves its principled stance as the lone national party to vote against the Cons' government in practice, and wins the title of the only party willing to make any effort to make Parliament work to improve matters.