Month: November 2008

[Speaker election] Notables missing

1008 – Clerk Audrey O'Brien finally gets MPs to sit down and shut up. Th first order of business is that MPs will now get out of their seats to be summoned to the Senate where they will be told to go back to the lower house to elect a new Speaker. And so, at 1011, MPs are headed for the Senate.

While they're gone — a quick note on the lay of the land in the House.

First, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not yet made an appearance and — who knows? — he may not. International Trade MInister Stockwell Day is on government business in Brazil this week. Foreign Affairs MInister Lawrence Cannon is in Peru for APEC Leaders Week.

Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff — rivals for the Liberal leadership — have been seated right next to each other, in the front row just to the left of the Speaker's Chair.

For this Parliament, all the opposition leaders are on the same side of the House, a result of far fewer Liberal bums to fill the opposition benches and many more Conservative bums filling the benches to the right. So that means Stéphane, Gilles, and Jack can all face Harper when they get up for Question Period. I suspect that's a big deal for the NDP as they have not been on the same side as the Official Opposition for — hmm — I don't know how long — probably not since the the end of the Jean Chrétien majorities.

The seating plan is not yet online but you should see it shortly at this page.

In any event here are your front rows, starting from the right of the speaker:

Jim Abbott, Greg Thompson, Rona Ambrose, Bev Oda, Peter Van Loan, Vic Toews, Stockwell Day, Rob Nicholson, Peter MacKay, Jim Prentice, Stephen Harper, Lawrence Cannon, Jim Flaherty, Tony Clement, Chuck Strahl, John Baird, Diane Finley, Gerry Ritz, Gail Shea, Jason Kenney, James Moore, Christian Paradis, Leona Aglukkaq, Steven Fletcher, John Duncan, Wayne Marston (NDP), Olivia Chow (NDP), Pat Martin (NDP)

And to the Speaker's left:

Bob Rae, Michael Ignatieff, Joe Volpe, Albina Guarnieri, Lawrence Macaulay, Maurizio Bevilacqua, Hedy Fry, Carolyn Bennett, Stéphane Dion, Ralph Goodale, Scott Brison, Ken Dryden, Martha Hall Findlay, Gerard Kennedy, (BQ): Francine Lalonde, Jean-Yves Laforest, Gilles Duceppe, Pierre Paquette, Paul Crète, Real Ménard, Claude Bachand, Mario Laframboise, Bernard Bigras, (NDP): Thomas Mulcair, Jack Layton, Libby Davies, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, Brian Masse, Jack Harris.

1025 – The prime minister is here and in his seat.

[Speaker election] Parliament convenes

Lordy, lordy look who's 40! I tried that line as the lede on my piece in our papers today about the opening of the 40th Parliament of Canada but my editors sensibly decided it was a bit too cheezy.

In any event, here we are, perched in the press gallery in the House of Commons, just over the left the shoulder of the Dean of the House, Louis Plamondon. Plamondon is sitting in the Speaker's Chair this morning because he, as the aforementioned Dean of the House, gets to run the election for the Speaker. Plamondon, a Bloc Quebecois MP who was first elected as a Progressive Conservative in 1984 when support for les bleus like Plamondon swept Brian Mulroney to his first monster majority. Plamondon would cross the floor six years later to join Lucien Bouchard and the Bloc Quebecois and he's been there ever since.

But back to election of the speaker which I will be live-blogging.

MPs were required to tell the Clerk of the House by 6 pm last night that they did NOT want to be Speaker. Those that failed to inform the Clerk that they did NOT want to be on the ballot are, as a result, able to stand for election.

That list includes:

  • Rob Anders
  • Mauril Bélanger
  • Paul Calandra
  • Joe Comartin
  • Dean Del Maestro
  • Barry Devolin
  • Royal Galipeau
  • James Lunney
  • Peter Milliken
  • Christian Oullet
  • Andrew Scheer
  • Joy Smith
  • David Tilson
  • Alan Tonks
  • Merv Tweed
  • Rodney Weston

The Clerk, Audrey O'Brien, is, right now summoning MPs to their seats and we're just about to get underway …

More in a minute . . .

Tory blogger nabs Clement

Conservative blogger Stephen Taylor is trying to live a precarious double or triple life. First, it seems pretty clear that he is a political partisan doing his bit to make sure that Conservatives continue to govern the country. Second, he draws a salary as an advisor/communicator for the Manning Institute for Democracy, a conservative initiative founded by Preston Manning to train politicians and organizer. And, finally, he's often tried to present news and information with the sort of independent, non-partisan bent that is more frequently associated with those who self-identify as journalists. I, for one, wish him luck. Many academics and journalism theorists would call some of what he's trying to do civic journalism or participatory journalism and I'm all for those kind of bottom-up experiments even though I may or may not agree with his politics.

I say this all with a tinge of professional jealousy , for Taylor, whether it be by dint of his connections or persistence, has what it is, so far as I know, the first one-on-one interview (left) with our new Industry Minister Tony Clement. (It matters little to the viewer/reader, incidently, who gets the scoop or how the scoop is acquired, so long as it is, in fact, a scoop.) CTV's Question Period got him for their broadcast of Nov. 16 but Taylor got him on Nov. 15 at the party's policy convention in Winnipeg.

In the interview, Clement notes that he's been “drinking from the firehose”, so to speak, in terms of bringing himself up to speed on issues within his portfolio. The first days of his tenure, of course, have been dominated by questions about support for the auto sector. But, as Clement tells Taylor, autos isn't the only sectoral interest he has. He's also concerned, for example, about aerospace and forestry.

“My job is to make sure that Canadian markets work in such a way as to promote competitiveness and productivity … We've got some short-term issues with the world economic meltdown. My department is working hand-in-glove with the Department of Finance on issues like access to credit, issues like liquidity in the marketplace, those kinds of things. So I'm the marketplace guy. I'm there to ensure our marketplace is working, that we continue to look for ways that Canadians are competitive and productive for the future.”

Taylor is the first (again, so far as I know) to ask if Clement's approach to the thorny issue of copyright will be different from his predecessors. Clement gives the stock answer – he's looking at the file and talking about it — but then Taylor asks him if the fact that the new Heritage Minister is not from Quebec will make a difference. The copyright file has been jointly managed by Industry and Heritage. The new Heritage Minister is James Moore, a BC MP, who, at age 32, has already won four general elections. “I'm part of the iPod generation,” said the 47-year-old Clement, “but [James] is really part of the iPod generation.” (Tip of the toque to the perfesser for this …)

And, given tomorrow's exciting race for Speaker of the House of Commons, Taylor also has videotaped interviews with four of the challengers to Speaker Peter Milliken. Three of them, certainly, are Taylor' s fellow travellers politically but one, Joe Comartin, is a New Democrat. The incumbent, Milliken, didn't want to play with Taylor. Taylor notes he's “not doing press”. Presumably, not agreeing to be interviewed by Taylor means not doing “press.” Fair enough. Taylor's trying to walk the walk so he's entitled to talk the talk. Other challengers were not available. Still, I'll bet this is about as good a response rate you'd get if you were a chase producer at any broadcast network.

Parliamentary procedure explained

Like you, dear reader, I've long wished for a handy Web site or two that would settle arguments, once and for all, about which of the six days of debate on a throne speech is set aside for votes on sub-amendments to the main amendments to the government's motion to accept the throne speech. (Answer: Days Two and Four)

Well, wait no longer. Here are the sites you will immediately want to place at the top of your bookmark list:

House of Commons Procedure and Practice (the famed Marleau and Montpetit)
Compendium of House of Commons Procedure
Annotated Standing Orders of the House of Commons, 2005 edition
,

Parliament set to get down to business

The key highlights so far in this week's Parliamentary calendar: 10 a.m. (Ottawa time) on Tuesday – Election of the Speaker and 2 p.m. on Wednesday – Speech from the Throne:

Once it began to appear in early October that Stephen Harper was going to be re-elected as prime minister, his aides were asked if he would quickly recall MPs for a fall session of the House of Commons.

Some thought he need not be in any rush. For one thing, he and his senior ministers have had a busy fall filled with international summits. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been at global summits in Washington, Brazil, and Peru. Mr. Harper was at the G20 last weekend in Washington and will travel to Peru at the end of this week for the annual leaders summit at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum. He also hosted a meeting of the country's premiers.

Second, by recalling Parliament, he would give his political opponents a forum to attack what they call his laissez-faire approach to the problems of the Canadian economy. He might have concluded that the last thing a government managing a rapidly deteriorating economy needed was a political circus in Ottawa.

But one of Mr. Harper's senior advisers, speaking on condition that he not be identified, quickly shot down any idea that Mr. Harper would be inclined to wait.

“He truly believes that the House of Commons is the place to conduct the nation's business,” the aide said a few days before election day.

And so, on Wednesday, barely a month after winning a strengthened minority government, Mr. Harper will take his seat in the Senate and listen to Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean read the speech from the throne, officially opening the 40th Parliament of Canada.

Read the rest …

Technorati Tags:

Meanwhile in Peru …

As the G20 summit wrapped up this weekend in Washington, international summit watchers now turn their attention to Lima, Peru where Leaders Weeks begins tomorrow for APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Prime Minister Stephen Harper will travel to Lima on Friday for meetings there next Saturday and Sunday.

As the host country, Peru is ramping it up from a security standpoint as it prepares to host the heads of state from 21 national economies including Canada, the U.S., Japan, China, Australia, Indonesia, and all the rest which have, as their common heritage, some shoreline on the Pacific Ocean. More than 10,000 Peruvian soldiers, sailors and air force personnel have been deployed to secure the meeting site, all under the command of Colonel Alberto Castillo.

The delegations (which, in Canada's case, includes travelling media) will be staying in Miraflores, San Isidro, Lima and San Borja — all of which you'd say would be part of Greater Lima, which has a population of 9.2 million.

A sobering read on Planet Finance

As Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the other leaders of G20 economies meet today in Washington at an “emergency summit” on the economy — helpfully dubbed The Meltdown Summit by CBC yesterday — here is a sobering read in the latest issue of Vanity Fair by super-smart historian Niall Ferguson:

… we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth.

Planet Finance seemed to spin faster, too. Every day $3.1 trillion changed hands on foreign-exchange markets. Every month $5.8 trillion changed hands on global stock markets. And all the time new financial life-forms were evolving. The total annual issuance of mortgage-backed securities, including fancy new “collateralized debt obligations” (C.D.O.’s), rose to more than $1 trillion. The volume of “derivatives”—contracts such as options and swaps—grew even faster, so that by the end of 2006 their notional value was just over $400 trillion. Before the 1980s, such things were virtually unknown. In the space of a few years their populations exploded. On Planet Finance, the securities outnumbered the people; the transactions outnumbered the relationships. [read the rest]

, ,

Graydon Carter on Nelson Aldrich on George Plimpton

George Plimpton 1963 Cocktail Party Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter writes in this weekend's New York TImes Book Review about a new biography of George Plimpton, George, Being George: George Plimpton’s Life as Told, Admired, Deplored, and Envied by 200 Friends, Relatives, Lovers, Acquaintances, Rivals — and a Few Unappreciative Observers edited by Nelson W. Aldrich, Jr. Carter's review is accompanied by the photo on the left, a cocktail party at Plimpton's place in 1963. (Plimpton is in the lower left). I am, like Carter, “someone who grew up in the Canadian provinces” and, perhaps again like Carter, I was pulled into the profession I'm in part because I thought it would be cool one day to hang out at such a swishy cocktail party like the one in the picture. But I'm sure I also wished to live the kind of life and meet the kind of people Plimpton did:

As literary lives go, Plimpton’s was a doozy. Well born, well bred, the father of four, a witness to the great, the good and the gifted, he epitomized the ideal of the life well lived. He sparred with prize­fighters and competed against the best tennis, football, hockey and baseball players in the world, and along the way he helped create a new form of “participatory journalism.” He palled around with Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and William Styron, and drank with Ernest Hemingway and Kenneth Tynan in Havana just after Castro’s revolution. He also edited and nursed that durable and amazing literary quarterly, The Paris Review, which published superb fiction and poetry and featured author interviews that remain essential reading for anyone interested in the unteachable art of writing. For someone like me, who grew up in the Canadian provinces, Plimpton was, like Bennett Cerf before him, the public face of the New York intellectual: tweedy, eclectic and with a plummy accent he himself described as “Eastern seaboard cosmopolitan.”

There are no doubt young Plimptophiles who don’t know about his friendship with Muhammad Ali (who used to call him “Kennedy” because he looked like one), or that he was at the side of his Harvard classmate and real Kennedy, Robert F., when he was shot and killed in the kitchen passageway of the old Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles 40 years ago. George was not only on a private plane with Bobby when he decided to run for president, he helped wrestle Sirhan Sirhan to the floor moments after the shooting.

He loved having well-born beauties around — I mean, who doesn’t? — but he was no snob. He could talk to anybody . . .

Layoffs in the OLO

Parliamentary research and staff budgets are, ultimately, a function of the number of seats your party wins in a general election. The Liberals, of course, did pretty poorly in the last election, getting fewer votes and fewer seats. The fact of fewer votes will mean less money for the party and fewer seats means their slice of the parliamentary budget will thinner.

We understand that, this afternoon, thinner budgets means fewer people working in the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition. At least eleven staffers have been let go in the OLO. While the party is appropriately reluctant to relesase names, an OLO official says there will be fewer people in the OLO working on policy or on the regional desks or on Leaders' Tour. After all, with only a few months left in his leadership, Dion is not going to be developing new policies or travelling the country whipping up support. That will be up to the new leader.

Stéphane Dion's core communications team — shop leader Mark Dunn and team members Sarah Bain and Jean-François del Torchio — will remain on the job.

Bob Rae's first hurdle: Ontario

The Liberal Party of Canada-Ontario (LPCO) executive meets at a Mississauga hotel this weekend to talk about a variety of matters and on Sunday, I'm told, they'll get a chance to hear the first pitches from the three declared leadership candidates – Dominic Leblanc, Michael Ignatieff, and Bob Rae.

Now the LPCO executive is not a small group. The executive includes the president of each Ontario riding association (or designate) as well as every Ontario Liberal MP. That's a big bunch and, if you're Bob Rae, an important bunch. I'm told that about 150 are expected for the weekend meeting.

Rae is popular among Liberals in many parts of the country but in Ontario, there are LIberals who worry his tenure as the NDP premier who had the misfortune of presiding over a rough recession that left a big hole in the provincial treasury will not be remembered fondly by Ontario voters. Sunday's meeting will be Rae's first chance in this relatively short leadership contest to convince his Ontario colleagues that his name can indeed win more seats for Liberal brand in Ontario.

, ,