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Liberal Dominic Leblanc: That's what all the felons say

A unanimous panel of three judges at the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled against the Conservative Party on the issue of a questionable, and possibly illegal, scheme the Conservatives cooked up to squeeze more advertising in the 2006 election campaign. [Read more about that here] The Conservatives have largely dismissed this court action and separate charges laid in the Ontario Court of Justice against two senators, the party, and two former party officials as an “adminstrative dispute.”

Liberal MP Dominic Leblanc tells reporters on Parliament Hill, “yeah, that's what all the felons say …” Click on the arrow to listen:

Listen!

 

 

Brad Wall Canada's most popular premier; Jean Charest most unpopular

Pollster Angus Reid tells us today that Saskatchewan's Brad Wall – he who got the feds to back down on that giant Potash deal — is the most popular premier in the country with 63 per cent of those in Canada's flattest province approving of the way he is doing his job. At the other end of the scale, just 13 per cent of Quebeckers approve of the way Jean Charest is going about his business. The pollster surveyed more than 6,000 from its online panel in nine provinces.

You can read Angus Reid's results yourself but what I found interesting in the top-to-bottom ranking (below) is that, aside from Wall, all the new kids on the Confederation's block seem to be a lot more popular than the old timers:

  1. Brad Wall SK – 63% approval rating
  2. Kathy Dunderdale NF – 55%
  3. David Alward NB – 42%
  4. Greg Selinger MB – 34%
  5. Darrell Dexter NS – 26%
  6. Ed Stelmach AB – 21%
  7. Dalton McGuinty ON / Gordon Campbell BC – 16%
  8. Jean Charest QC – 13%

Of some now, we will have provincial elections later this year for sure in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and PEI. (Premier Ghiz didn't make Angus Reid's poll). We were to have one in Alberta this fall but the Progressive Conservative leadership race there puts that on hold. Meanwhile, B.C. was not scheduled to have a provincial election but Christy Clark, who, on the weekend, won the race to succeed Campbell has suggested that she will seek a mandate from the voters sooner than later.

MPs vexed that our reporting trumped their "privileges"

A few MPs ate up about 30 minutes in the the House of Commons Tuesday because they were vexed that we were too accurate in our first reports Tuesday about the government's spending plan:

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—Tecumseh, NDP):  Mr. Speaker, … I stand in this House to raise a question of privilege both for myself, as an individual member of Parliament, and for all other members of Parliament as well.  My question of privilege arises from the estimates tabled today in the House by the Treasury Board President. In an article by reporter, David Akin, who is part of the parliamentary bureau and the QMI Agency, that appeared on a web site earlier than the time the estimates were tabled in this House, it is clear that Mr. Akin had specific knowledge of what was in those estimates.

I would draw your attention specifically to the fact that in both the written article and in what was up on Mr. Akin's blog [ed note: There was nothing on my blog just the news story and, as you'll see in a minute, a Tweet]  on his site as of 9 o'clock this morning, the estimates not being tabled in this House until after 10 o'clock this morning, Mr. Akin says:

The government's spending plan, to be tabled today, shows that the [Prime Minister] plans to write cheques for at least $250.8 billion in 2011-2012.

On page 7 of the main estimates that were tabled today, in the table titled “Comparison of Main Estimates”, it says that the total net expenditures of the Government of Canada for 2011-12 is estimated to be $250.8 billion, which is exactly the same figure that Mr. Akin had in his article before the estimates were tabled here.

Mr. Akin has a number of postings on Twitter, a social media network, and one was posted about an hour before 10 o'clock this morning, before the House was sitting and before the estimates were tabled. The posting reads, “Govt will table spending plan for FY 2010 today: Total $250 billion, about $10 billion less than this year”.

With the facts I have provided in two different formats, there is no doubt that the journalist had knowledge of what was in the estimates before they were tabled in this House.

Mr. Speaker, on the issue of our privileges as members of Parliament, you have ruled on a number of occasions that, both individually and collectively, we have an absolute right to expect the government of the day to provide information, whether it be on a bill or, as in this case, the estimates, to this House before they are provided any place else.

Just to headline this, Mr. Speaker, I will quote you on a couple of occasions when you have said this more explicitly. The basic concept is that if we are to do our jobs and we are to perform our responsibilities as members of Parliament, we need to be able to respond to inquiries based on the knowledge that is tabled in this House, whether those come from the media, from particular sectors of the economy, society or individual constituents. We need to be in a position to present responses but we cannot do that if material is getting out into the public, in this case in the form of a journalist, without us seeing that in advance. We have no ability to respond and in fact we cannot do our jobs.

….   there was a finding of prima facie breach of privilege.

If you do so find in this case, Mr. Speaker, I would be prepared to move the appropriate motion to have this matter referred to the appropriate committee.

Click on through to read what Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski had to say in response and what Liberal MPs Kevin Lamoureux and Paul Szabo and Bloc Quebecois MP Daniel Paille had to say in support of Comartin.

 

The Tim Horton's Hospital: NDP says Canada's health care needs a double-double on the double

You can't make this stuff up:

Roll up the gurney.

A Tim Hortons restaurant inside an overcrowded hospital near Vancouver was transformed into an emergency room Monday night.

Four patients were treated in the doughnut shop on Monday night due to overcrowding at New Westminster, B.C.'s Royal Columbian Hospital, officials said. [Read the rest of the story]

That prompted this exchange Tuesday in the House of Commons between Finn Donnelly, the NDP MP for New Westminster and Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq:

Mr. Fin Donnelly (New Westminster—Coquitlam, NDP):   Mr. Speaker, it is obvious the Conservatives just do not get it.  Yesterday, the lack of emergency resources took an absurd turn. Overcrowding in the Royal Columbian Hospital resulted in patients being treated at Tim Hortons. The Conservative government needs to order a double-double on the double and to wake up and smell the health care crisis in this country. Will the Conservatives listen to New Democrats on public health care to ensure folks are not being treated in a donut shop?

Hon. Leona Aglukkaq (Minister of Health, CPC): Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to a universal publicly funded health care system and the Canada Health Act.  Unlike the previous Liberal government, our government will not cut health transfers. We continue to work with the provinces, territories, and health care professionals to look for ways to improve health care systems. That is why we have increased the health transfers to the provinces and the territories by 33%, which Liberals voted against. This significant funding increase allows the provinces and territories to continue to meet the health care needs of their residents.

Freeman Dyson reviews Gleick's The Information: From drum language to the human genome

Freemon Dyson reviews James Gleick's The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (Pantheon):

In 1945 Shannon wrote a paper, “A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography,” which was stamped SECRET and never saw the light of day. He published in 1948 an expurgated version of the 1945 paper with the title “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” The 1948 version [PDF] appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal, the house journal of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, and became an instant classic. It is the founding document for the modern science of information. After Shannon, the technology of information raced ahead, with electronic computers, digital cameras, the Internet, and the World Wide Web

…

The consequences of the information flood are not all bad. One of the creative enterprises made possible by the flood is Wikipedia, started ten years ago by Jimmy Wales. Among my friends and acquaintances, everybody distrusts Wikipedia and everybody uses it. Distrust and productive use are not incompatible. Wikipedia is the ultimate open source repository of information. Everyone is free to read it and everyone is free to write it. It contains articles in 262 languages written by several million authors. The information that it contains is totally unreliable and surprisingly accurate. It is often unreliable because many of the authors are ignorant or careless. It is often accurate because the articles are edited and corrected by readers who are better informed than the authors.

Jimmy Wales hoped when he started Wikipedia that the combination of enthusiastic volunteer writers with open source information technology would cause a revolution in human access to knowledge. The rate of growth of Wikipedia exceeded his wildest dreams. Within ten years it has become the biggest storehouse of information on the planet and the noisiest battleground of conflicting opinions. It illustrates Shannon’s law of reliable communication. Shannon’s law says that accurate transmission of information is possible in a communication system with a high level of noise. Even in the noisiest system, errors can be reliably corrected and accurate information transmitted, provided that the transmission is sufficiently redundant. That is, in a nutshell, how Wikipedia works.

The information flood has also brought enormous benefits to science. The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries.

Congratulations to the new Parliamentary Press Gallery executive

The Parliamentary Press Gallery holds annual elections for its board of directors and that day was today. I've served on the board for the last three years but find myself a little too busy with my day job to seek re-election. In each year that I've ran there has been a bona fide election with people campaigning just like the real politicians we cover. But this year, all the positions were filled by acclamation and all by excellent representatives. Here's the group:

  • President: Chris Rands (CBC) President
  • Past-President: Hélène Buzetti (Le Devoir)
  • Vice-President: Malorie Beauchemin (La Presse)
  • Treasurer: Marie Vastel (Le Presse Canadienne)
  • Secretary: Elizabeth Thompson (iPolitics)
  • Director: Daniel Thibault (Radio-Canada)
  • Director: Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail)
  • Director: Jim Bronskill (The Canadian Press)
  • Director: Jennifer Ditchburn (The Canadian Press)
  • Director: Mark Kennedy (Postmedia)

 

The massive PR push for Canada's Economic Action Plan (TM)

In what has to be one of the biggest single-day public relations offensives yet for a government, the federal Conservatives have dispatched more than half its caucus to various locations around the country to hold press events associated with the government's Economic Action Plan. The PMO says there are 80 press events scheduled around the country and there may well be. I only count about 70 media advisories in my e-mail inbox this evening, a handful of which are from MPs who are not Conservatives.

Meanwhile, the Liberals and NDP each hold a press conference in the National Press Theatre in Ottawa where they will try to keep the Bev Oda affair going. No word if the Bloc Quebecois have any events Thursday.

I must say: I do think it odd that for all the PR push of these 70-80 events, neither Prime Minister Stephen Harper nor Finance Minister Jim Flaherty — the two politicians most closely associated with the framing of the recession-fighting Economic Action Plan — have any public events scheduled Thursday. Instead, we have this list. (I have organized this by region and have converted ALL TIMES TO OTTAWA TIME as that's where I work)

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

08:30 SEN Elizabeth Marshall funding announcement St. John's NF

MARITIMES

11:00 MP Rodney Weston “important infrastructure tour “ Saint John NB

12:00 MIN VIC TOEWS – Crime prevention announcement Saint John NB

11:00 MIN ROB MOORE – Photo opp / funding announcement Sussex NB

10:00 MP Greg Kerr – Funding announcement Digby NS

13:30 MP Greg Kerr infrastructure event Yarmouth NS

14:00 MIN PETER MacKAY – Funding announcement New Glasgow NS

 

QUEBEC AND ONTARIO

08:30 MIN GARY GOODYEAR – Funding announcement Toronto ON

09:00 MP Bruce Stanton – Mariposa Folk Festival Orillia ON

09:00 MP Phil McColeman EAP Brantford ON

09:30 MP Lois Brown infrastructure announcement Newmarket ON

09:30 MP Pat Davidson infrastructure announcement Point Edward ON

10:00 MIN LISA RAITT infrastructure announcement Milton ON

10:00 MP Guy Lauzon infrastructure Cornwall ON

10:00 MP Paul Calandra infrastructure announcement Schomberg ON

11:00 MP Bob Rae – Bev Oda scandal presser NPT ON

11:00 MP Dave MacKenzie infrastructure Oxford ON

11:30 MIN ROB NICHOLSON Fort George tour Niagara-on-the-Lake ON

11:30 MP Paul Dewar – Bev Oda presser NPT ON

11:30 MP Stephen Woodworth “important economic update event” Waterloo ON

12:30 MIN GARY GOODYEAR AND MP Bob Dechert – Touring instructional centre Mississauga ON

13:00 LPC MICHAEL IGNATIEFF – Working families tour Toronto ON

13:00 MIN ROB NICHOLSON College tour Welland ON

13:00 MP Dave Van Kesteren “important infrastructure even” Chatham ON

13:00 MP Mike Wallace – CIDA announcement Burlington ON

13:30 MP Rick Norlock infrastructure event Cobourg ON

14:00 MIN JASON KENNEY and MP Pierre Poilievre infrastructure announcement Ottawa ON

14:00 MP Peter Braid tours infrastructure development Waterloo ON

14:30 MP Bruce Stanton and Patrick Brown Oro Station ON

15:00 MP Greg Rickford Infrastructure event Thunder Bay ON

09:30 MP Jacques Gourde – Infrastructure announcement Lotbiniere QC

10:00 MIN DENIS LEBEL will announce funding to Saint-Anthony's Hermitage Lac-Bouchette QC

10:00 MIN JOSEE VERNER – Infrastructure announcement Quebec City QC

10:30 MP Sylvie Boucher – skills funding announcement Quebec City QC

11:20 MIN JEAN-PIERRE BLACKBURN – Monument restoration Sherbrooke QC

15:00 MIN JEAN-PIERRE BLACKBURN – Speech to COOP federee Montreal QC

16:30 SEN Larry Smith infrastructure announcement Pointe-Claire QC

MANITOBA and SASKATCHEWAN

10:00 MIN GERRY RITZ – Funding for pig producers Winnipeg MB

11:30 MP Joy Smith “an update on the Gateway Recreation Centre projec” Winnipeg MB

12:30 MP James Bezan infrastructure announcement Stonewall MB

12:30 MP Shelly Glover infrastructure Winnipeg MB

11:00 MP Ray Boughen infrastructure Moose Jaw SK

12:00 MIN TONY CLEMENT – speech digital economy Saskatoon SK

12:00 MP Garry Breitkreuz infrastructure Melville SK

14:30 MIN GERRY RITZ and MP Kelly Block tour infrastructure project Saskatoon SK

16:00 MP Ed Komarnicki infrastructure event Moosomin SK

ALBERTA

10:00 MIN DIANE ABLONCZY infrastructure event Calgary AB

10:30 MP Chris Warkentin”important infrastructure event” Grande Prairie AB

11:30 MP Blake Richards “important infrastructure event” Canmore AB

12:00 MP Blaine Calkins infrastructure event Wetaskiwin AB

12:30 MP Lavar Payne tours infrastructure project Medicine Hat AB

13:00 MP Laurie Hawn – Identification of WWI soldier remains Edmonton AB

13:00 MP Peter Goldring tours construction site Edmonton AB

13:30 MP Tim Uppal – Heritage announcement Edmonton AB

14:00 MIN ROB MERRIFIELD ” important infrastructure event “ Whitecourt AB

15:30 MP Blaine Calkins event Wetaskiwin AB

17:30 MIN ROB MERRIFIELD infrastructure Mayerthorpe AB

20:00 MIN ROB MERRIFIELD “important infrastructure event” Onoway AB

BRITISH COLUMBIA and YUKON

12:00 MP John Weston Infrastructure announcement West Vancouver BC

13:00 MIN GARY LUNN and MIN LYNNE YELICH clean energy announcement Vancouver BC

13:00 MP Ed Fast Infrastructure Abbotsford BC

13:30 SEN Yonah Martin infrastructure event Vancouver BC

14:00 MIN CHUCK STRAHL – Infrastructure announcement Chilliwack BC

14:00 MIN JAMES MOORE holds Economic Action Plan Event Vancouver BC

14:00 MP Jim Abbott infrastructure announcement Cranbrook BC

17:00 MIN LYNNE YELICH – funding for film industry North Vancouver BC

17:00 MP Mark Warawa “important infrastructure event” Langley BC

18:00 MIN JOHN DUNCAN infrastructure Esquimalt BC

18:00 MIN LYNNE YELICH tours RiNC projects North Vancouver BC

14:00 SEN Daniel Lang infrastructure event Whitehorse YT

 

Conservatives fan out across the country to hand out cheques: $211 million today alone

In the same week that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation launched its federal debt clock, dozens of Conservative ministers and MPs are fanning out across the country with cheques in their hand to announce, re-announce, and otherwise dish out federal funds.

Here's the scorecard:

On Mon Feb 21:

There were 16 funding announcements with a total value of $44.3 million. Of those:

  • Nine announcements $21 million benefit Conservative ridings only.
  • Four announcements worth $19.1 million benefit ridings held by MPs of at least two different political parties.
  • Two announcements worth $108,000 benefit NDP ridings.
  • One announcement worth $4 million benefits a Liberal riding.

On Tue Feb 22 (so far):

There were 20 funding announcements worth a total of $211.5 million.

  • 11 announcements worth $10.1 million were for Conservative ridings.
  • Three announcements worth $157 million were for Liberal ridings. (Just one of those was the $155 million re-announcement at CFB Esquimalt for a new helicopter operations centre.)
  • Three announcements worth $1.6 million were for NDP ridings.
  • Three announcements worth $42.5 million benefit regions or ridings held by multiple parties.

So far, there have been no announcements that benefit ridings exclusively held by the Bloc Quebecois.

On Wed Feb 23, I count at least eleven funding announcements beginning with ACOA Minister Keith Ashfield at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton at 0830 ET.

 

 

Do the Conservatives need a new pollster?

On February 11, Ekos released a poll, commissioned by its media client CBC, that showed the following national federal vote intention:

  • Conservative: 37.3 %
  • Liberal: 24.8 %
  • NDP: 14.2 %
  • Green: 10.7 %
  • BQ: 9.9 %

In its release, Ekos noted that: “From a Liberal (or indeed NDP) perspective, this poll can be summarised as nasty, brutish, and short. The opposition is losing touch with an increasingly distant Conservative party. The Conservatives have advanced with virtually all groups and now enjoy a 12.5-point lead (the largest since October 2009).”

Within hours of that poll being released, the Conservative  “Alerte-Info-Alert” bot spat out the following:

Today, CBC released a poll with results that are inconsistent with our internal polling and other recent published surveys. In the past, pollsters have sometimes reported support for our Party that is unusually high relative to the prevailing data, only to have the anomaly corrected in a subsequent poll, giving the artificial impression of negative momentum. As always, we do not comment on polling.

That's my highlight in the Tory message: The Conservatives wanted people to know that they think Ekos got it wrong. Really?

Ekos was out their poll on Feb. 11.

So there's four polls with broadly similar numbers and yet, the first poll, from Ekos, showed “results that are inconsistent with our internal polling,” the Conservatives said. Now to disagree with one poll and say its numbers are different than your own is one thing, but after four polls that are remarkably similar to the one Ekos had, it's pretty clear Ekos numbers did not show Conservative support that was higher “than the prevailing data.” In fact, Ekos is on the conservative side (if you'll pardon the pun). Perhaps the Conservative Party needs a new pollster. In other words, I now tend to discount the Conservative Info-Bot and now believe that, yes, the Conservative adds attacking Liberal Michael Ignatieff produced a measureable and significant bump in support for the Tories and depressed Liberal support.

But I now have some other questions worth exploring next time I run into a pollster:

Look at the numbers for the Green Party. One pollster, Nanos, has them at 4.9 per cent nationally. The others all have the Greens at 10 per cent or better. So Nanos is either missing fully half of Green party support or statistical sampling methods used by the others is counting Green support twice. And yet, while there is one major outlier when it comes to Green Support, the Conservative and Liberal numbers are all very close.

Also: Ekos and Harris Decima have the NDP in the same place at 14 per cent or , but Nanos and Ipsos have the NDP much higher than that, at 18 per cent or more.  Nanos finds fewer Greens. Perhaps he found more NDP supporters? And yet, Ipsos found as many Greens as all but Nanos but has the NDP has high as Nanos.

 

For Oda-philes: Conservative MPs get their talking points

Normally, the much-maligned “Alerte-Info-Alert”-bot memos distributed on a near-daily basis to Conservative MPs by the party and/or PMO are short and to the point, designed to give MPs back in their ridings a few common points of reference on a given issue of the day if ever they run into a local reporter or constituent with pesky questions.

But this weekend, Conservative MPs got a much longer, more detailed Alerte-Info-Alert-bot memo about the situation involving International Development Minister Bev Oda, who stands accused by her political opponents of the serious charge of lying to Parliament. Some Conservative MPs have told me they are uneasy at best, and unhappy at worst, with the situation. I've reproduced the memo below — it's been widely distributed to Conservative MPs and to some news organizations, including QMI — and I read it, then, not only as a list of talking points for MPs to use with reporters and constituents but also as an appeal from the leadership in their party to remind any uneasy MPs that they are in the right on the Oda issue. In other words, though the senior leadership of the party insist they are right (see the last line!), the very existence of this memo speaks to the fact that they're feeling the heat. So here's the memo. Does it change your mind, one way or the other?

Minister Oda and KAIROS: the Facts

Information regarding Tom Lukiwski’s response to a point of privilege raised in the House of Commons on Friday February 18.

*Our Government supports funding to deliver aid and tangible results for the people of developing countries, not subsidizing advocacy.

*Minister Oda made a decision that reflects the priorities and policies of our Government.

*The Minister has been clear: this was her decision.

*The Minister has apologized for a lack of clarity in her testimony before Committee, and has rectified that lack of clarity.

*We stand by Minister Oda and her decision not to provide millions of dollars in advocacy funding to KAIROS.

Here are the facts:

KAIROS’ Request for $7 million

KAIROS made a request for funding from CIDA in the amount of $7 million. Minister Oda determined that this request was inconsistent with our Government’s foreign aid priorities. Our Government believes taxpayers money budgeted for foreign aid should be used to deliver aid and tangible results for the people of developing countries, not for subsidizing advocacy.

CIDA’s Memo to Minister Oda Seeking Her Decision

The internal memo in question was sent to Minister Oda by CIDA public servants who were seeking a decision from her. An internal memo is not a contract requiring the parties, in this case the Minister and her department, to agree. An internal memo includes departmental analysis and a departmental recommendation, and is a tool used to convey the decision of the Minister to her officials so that they may implement the Minister’s decision. Across government, hundreds of these internal memos cross ministers’ desks everyday. This is how elected officials transmit their decisions to the public service in our system of government.

Minister Oda was the only person with the authority to make a decision regarding this application for funding. In this case, the Minister’s decision was to reject the recommendation provided to her, and direct that CIDA not provide funding to KAIROS.

The Minister had reviewed the memo, made her decision not to approve the funding application, and asked her staff to follow through on it. The Minister was travelling out of Ottawa on the day that her staff completed the paper work to implement her decision, so they, with the Minister’s authority, applied her automated signature, which is used when required because a Minister is unable to personally sign a document, and indicated her decision on the memo by clearly indicating that she did NOT approve the funding application.

The memo was then returned to the very officials who had sent it to the Minister for a decision. By definition, those who received the returned memo could not have been misled, and were not misled, by the manner in which the Minister’s decision was communicated in the document. Margaret Biggs, President of CIDA, confirmed this when she testified before a House committee on December 9, 2010:

Ms. Margaret Biggs (President of CIDA): Yes, I think as the minister said, the agency did recommend the project to the minister. She has indicated that. But it was her decision, after due consideration, to not accept the department's advice.

This is quite normal, and I certainly was aware of her decision. The inclusion of the word “not” is just a simple reflection of what her decision was, and she has been clear. So that's quite normal.

I think we have changed the format for these memos so the minister has a much clearer place to put where she doesn't want to accept the advice, which is her prerogative.

The Order Paper Question

Liberal MP Glen Pearson posed an order paper question in early 2010 to Minister Oda asking why CIDA had decided not to fund KAIROS.

In her April 2010 answer to this order paper question, Minister Oda referred to “The CIDA decision not to continue KAIROS funding.” The Liberals now assert that this answer suggests that agency officials rather than the Minister opposed funding to KAIROS. Public servants did not have the authority to approve funding for this application. Only the Minister did. For this funding request, there was only one possible decision-maker, Minister Oda, and once she made a decision it became CIDA’s decision. Her answer was not only accurate, it was fully responsive to the order paper question and could not have been answered in any other way.

The Alleged Contradiction

While testifying at the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Minister Oda was asked who had inserted the word “NOT” to communicate back to the department her decision not to provide funding to KAIROS. Because she did not know specifically which staff member had inserted the word “NOT”, she said she did not know. At the same hearing, she told the Committee eleven times that she was responsible for the decision.

The Bigger Picture

The Minister has apologized for a lack of clarity in her testimony before the Committee, and has rectified that lack of clarity.

Minister Oda made a decision which reflected the priorities and policies of our Government. We stand by Minister Oda and her decision.