Month: March 2007

Comuzzi kicked out of the Liberal caucus

Joe ComuzziJoe Comuzzi, (left) the Liberal MP from Thunder Bay, has been kicked out of the Liberal caucus after declaring he’ll vote in support of the federal budget. 

Comuzzi represents a riding that includes a significant cancer research centre and he says that he believes the Conservative commitment in the budget to fund cancer research will directly benefit his riding.

Comuzzi repeated that declaration in a meeting with Liberal leader Stephane Dion and so Dion has kicked him out of the caucus.

The odd thing here, as my colleague Robert Fife is reporting, is that Liberal caucus chair Raymond Bonin did not even know about Comuzzi’s dismissal until a reporter told him and had, in fact, counselled Dion not to kick Comuzzi out. Comuzzi is a relatively popular MP who served in Paul Martin’s cabinet but resigned because he said he could not comply with Martin’s orders that all cabinet minister had to vote in favour of the same-sex marriage legislation.

Even more oddly, Comuzzi has only said he will vote in favour of the Conservative budget. No votes have even been held yet. So Comuzzi has been punished without actually committing any crime.

UPDATE: Here is Dion’s statement on the matter:

Date: March 21, 2007

For Release: Immediate

Statement by the Honourable Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Opposition

The Hon. Joseph Comuzzi, Member of Parliament for Thunder Bay – Superior North, has been expelled from the Liberal Caucus.

This is not a decision that I, or anyone in the Liberal caucus, takes lightly.

I encourage the discussion of opinions on matters of policy. However, it is not possible to support this bad Conservative budget and to be a member of the Liberal caucus. Mr. Comuzzi has made it very clear that he will vote in favour of the budget. A vote on a budget or a Throne Speech is always a vote of confidence. The unavoidable consequence of voting against the caucus on these votes is to no longer be part of the caucus.

 

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The politics of social networking tools

So I finally got around to signing up on Facebook and immediately poked Stephen Harper, Stephane Dion, and Jack Layton. I'm not exactly sure what 'poking' is but it sounds fun to say “I just poked Stephen Harper.” I assume he'll be able to poke back. But I wonder what you think about services like Facebook or Orkut. Do you see a role for these things come election time? Are you using these services right now to organize, communicate, and network for political purposes. I'm curious how or if these online services are being harnessed to help advance political causes in Canada. Do you think they'll be effective and actually make a difference at the polls? Let me know what you're doing on Facebook or what you think of the political value of these services. Feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

Harper to the polls on justice issues?

Stephen Harper is giving a speech to the Conservative Party’s candidate school in Mississauga, Ont. this weekend. If you’re looking for a hint about what he’ll use as the ‘trigger’ to call an election, try this passage:

“We took action to introduce mandatory prison sentences for gun crimes, a crackdown on violent, dangerous offenders and reverse onus on bail applications involving firearms offences.

Our opponents continue to obstruct these bills.

They do so at their own political peril.

We are willing, and we are ready, to put these issues to the voters at the next general election and be accountable for our positions. Are they? I don’t think so. We are. We’ll take it to them!”

 

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A Guelph blog

Canada GeeseI came. I saw. I Guelphed.

That phrase came from some jokesters who wrote for the student newspaper at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (it had not yet become a university) when the head of that institution, Brian Segal, became president of my alma mater. The Ryerson guys did a whole issue at that time poking fun at Guelph. Segal, who is the brother of Senator Hugh, would go on to become an important executive with Rogers Communications. I quite liked what the Ryerson guys did — I thought it was very witty — and have repeated that phrase as often as I could.

But I digress …

Sue Richards – who I was so pleased to hear from as I haven’t heard from her in ages, probably not since her days as one of the first co-conspirators to get the now world famous Hillside Festival on the map —  has just alerted me to the existence of a Guelph Blog where you will find lots of things about Guelph, the Royal City, in southwestern Ontario, where I grew up and did all my schooling. The photo at the top of this post is a picture of a Canada Goose crossing the frozen Eramosa River in Guelph. I must tell my good friend Erik F. all about this site …

Now, I won’t tell you exactly which one it was but the window in one of the apartments I lived in while at the University is in this excellent picture.

 

Meanwhile at the Wheat Board …

Barley producers finished voting on Tuesday, March 13 on the question of the Canadian Wheat Board’s single-desk selling monopoly. Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl put out a press release today saying that he’ll announce the results “soon”.

The “rigourous approach” that is being taken by the independent third-party vote-counters (accountancy KPMG) apparently takes some time.

 

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John Reynolds, lobbyist

He said he wouldn’t — but he did. On March 1, John Reynolds — one of the most influential Conservatives within that party — registered as an unpaid lobbyist for three non-profit organizations — The Rick Hansen Foundation, Science World, and Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan’s initiative to fight drug addiction. After quitting politics and joining the law firm Lang Michener, Reynolds promised he would not lobby his “good friend” Stephen Harper and would only provide Lang Michener clients with “strategic advice.”

But sharp-eyed Vancouver Sun reporter Peter O’Neil spotted this in the lobbyist’s registration database and wrote it up.

In his piece, O’Neil quotes Reynolds:

“I'm a prominent person within the party, and I'm going to make recommendations to our guys, cabinet ministers and others, including MPs, that 'hey, these are good projects for my province and I'd like them to happen.' And I will put myself down as a lobbyist when I do that.”

And quotes Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch, who worries this is the thin end of the wedge:

“His definition of a good cause may not be another person's definition of a good cause. And he's still trading on his inside access and relationships, which means he's advocating a who-you-know system as opposed to a merit-based system.”

After long service as a Conservative MP, Reynolds was national campaign co-chair in 2006 and will likely do so again.

Tip of the toque to Jarrett Plonka, a Conservative, who’s ‘outraged’ by Reynolds failure to honour his promise.

2002 Access to Information Review: Ensuring Compliance, A Better Access Process

Some notes from my review of the final Report of the Access to Information Review Task Force, June 2002:

… in recent years, the relations between the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) and the government have become increasingly strained and there are now a number of proceedings before the courts dealing with the scope of the Commissioner’s powers and with questions of procedural fairness. This suggests that there are serious issues to be addressed. (p. 89)

The Task Force is of the view that the government should develop the ability to process requests electronically, and do so as soon as possible. The United States has legislated a move toward electronic access, and the government could borrow from, and build on, its experience. (p. 119)

Access to information is here to stay, and the government needs to think about budgeting for it in the same way as it does for regular program delivery to Canadians. In other words, it must explicitly identify and plan for resource requirements (skills, technology, money, etc.), monitor trends, measure performance, and identify efficiencies. Government institutions should also consider the implications for access to information when planning a new program, or making revisions to existing ones. Several departments have significantly improved their performance by considering access as a program like any other.

Now playing: Ma, Kremer, Phillips, Kashkashian – Franz Schubert: Adagio & Fugue in C minor, K.546: I. Adagio

Nicholas Kristof: Aid

…Robert Calderisi, a humanitarian who has had plenty of experience in Africa, calls for aid cuts in The Trouble with Africa: Why Foreign Aid Isn't Working. Calderisi is a Canadian who spent three decades at the World Bank dealing with development problems. His book is more focused on Africa, while [William] Easterly [author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforst to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good] concentrates on aid in general, but they make similar arguments and, in some respects, have similar prescriptions. Calderisi emphasizes that the problem of aid is not just a matter of quantity:

Almost everyone in North America and Europe who shares my ideals believes that more aid, along with additional lecturing on governance, will help Africa. I want to puncture that illusion. Africans need breathing space much more than they need money. Not a Marshall Plan, but real backing for the few governments that are fighting poverty, plus political support for the millions of Africans who are resisting oppression and violence in the rest of the continent.

At the end of his book, in a chapter offering a series of specific recommendations, Calderisi suggests cutting direct aid to individual countries in half. He explains: “Contrary to conventional recommendations, direct foreign aid to most African countries should be reduced, not increased.” In his view “most” African governments are using aid corruptly, ineffectively, and wastefully. Helping people who seek different political arrangements at least offers the hope that governments may change their ways or be replaced.

Both Easterly and Calderisi argue that the world concentrates too much on amounts of aid given and not enough on how well it works …

…Several studies have shown no overall connection between aid and growth. But one very important study, by the economists Craig Burnside and David Dollar in 2000, found that aid did boost growth in countries with good governance. So that conclusion has become the new conventional wisdom, and it's partly behind the effort in the US Millennium Challenge Accounts, a new federally sponsored aid program, to channel assistance only to countries that are less corrupt and better managed.

Unfortunately, Easterly repeated the study by Burnside and Dollar but drew on a larger pool of data. This time he found no evidence that “aid works in a good policy environment.” Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian of the International Monetary Fund came to the same conclusion, and they also suggest a reason. After closely examining the evidence they concluded that “aid inflows have systematic adverse effects on a country's competitiveness.”

From Kristof, Nicholas, “Aid: Can it Work?” in The New York Review of Books, October 5, 2006, p. 41

Amartya Sen has some thoughts about Easterly’s book.

2002 Access to Information Review: The Access Process

Some notes from my review of the final Report of the Access to Information Review Task Force, June 2002:

We believe that requesters should be able to choose the format for the copy they receive, if the record can be disclosed, and already exists in that format. (p. 71)

Some government institutions are not releasing any information to a requester before the deadline for responding, or until the full request is completely processed. Others are releasing batches of information to a requester as it is processed. We believe this is the better course. If the requester wishes to receive some information as soon as it is ready for release, there is usually no reason why it should not be provided. (p. 75)

For 2000-2001, the average cost per [ATI] request was $1,035; the average fee collected per request was $12.47; the average fee waived was $7.45.

Flaherty to be locked up

For the first time, a federal Finance Minister will join the hundreds of journalists in the budget lock-up next week.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will table his government’s second budget on Monday March 19 shortly after 4 pm Ottawa time. But around 2 p.m., Flaherty will take questions from journalists in the budget lock-up. This is a practice Flaherty would have been familiar with when he was Ontario’s finance minister. And it’s no coincidence that this innovation is happening as Richard Brennan takes over leadership of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Brennan was president of the Queen’s Park Press Gallery for eight years and thought that the good idea they had in Toronto ought to work in Ottawa.

Brennan ran the idea by Dan Miles, Flaherty’s director of communications, and it was a quick and easy sell. Miles and Brennan go way back. Miles was at Queen’s Park with Flaherty and before he became a political staffer, Miles was a Queen’s Park reporter for the CTV station in Toronto.

Lock-ups in Ottawa happen all the time — for the Auditor General’s reports, for a major CRTC decision, for Bank of Canada interest rate announcements and so on. But the budget lock-up is the king of them all. Journalists can go into the lockup as early as 9:30 a.m. where they must stay — without cell phone, BlackBerry or any other way of communicating with the outside world — until Flaherty stands in the House of Commons at 4 p.m.

Food is available for purchase inside the lock-up although — if you’re going to be in one of these for the first time — you’re better off bringing your lunch. Prices last year were astronomical – a single oatmeal cookie was two dollars! — and the food on offer was pretty pedestrian. Finance officials have apparently promised that the food will be better this time — but there’s no free lunch. Journalists and all others in the lockup will have to pay for their meals.

This lock-up will be held at the Ottawa Congress Centre and there will be hundreds — including yours truly — inside.

You can look over all the lock-up details yourself at Finance Canada’s Web site.