Category: Politics

I’m in Chicago covering Conrad Black’s trials but some political staffers have sent me messages to say that the Conservatives today are filibustering and putting up procedural roadblocks at various House of Commons committees meeting today. Then, on Facebook, Liberal MP Mark Holland publishes the following account of today’s meeting of the International Trade Committee. Holland is not normally a member of this committee but is subbing in for his colleague Navdeep Bains.

Holland’s account of the committee follows but at the end of the meeting, the lone NDP member of this committee, Peter Julian, begins a process to have the Conservative chairman of the committee, Leon Benoit (right), removed as chair. This is at least the second time Julian has tried to do this. The last time, Benoit and Julian worked out their differences. Not sure how it will work out this time around.

Here then is Holland(left)’s report from Committee, as he posted it on his Facebook page (I’d provide a link but as you have to signed up to use Facebook and you may also have to be Holland’s “Facebook Friend”, links would not be widely available. As a result I publish it here unedited as I copied and pasted it from his page at about 4 pm Ottawa time)

Via Blackberry –

Being the good friend that I am, I agreed to stand in today for Navdeep Bains at the International Trade Committee. Moments ago, the Conservative Chair Leon Benoit cut off the witness in the middle of his presentation. The witness was Gordon Laxer, a Director with the Parkland Institute. The puzzled Mr. Laxer was stopped by the Chair because Leon said he was off topic. He demanded the witness speak only about items linked to the days agenda. Fair enough – except that the witness was doing exactly that. In point of fact, the previous witness was also discussing the same thing – energy security as it pertains to Canada-US trade. After being rebuked by the Chair, the witness was allowed to continue. After about another minute of speaking, the Chair unceremoniously cut off the witness a second time leaving him with still half of his presentation to make. Flustered, Leon called upon the next witness to start speaking who just looked back at him totally baffled. There are about 30 or so people watching all of this – all of whom were laughing in bewilderment or shaking their heads. This all would have been odd enough but it gets worse.
The ruling that the witness could not continue was challenged. The Chair gave a long speech about why his ruling should stand. When people attempted to question this, he said a motion to challenge the chair is not debatable. It was pointed out that he had just been debating – he ignored that. Leon, then asked “Shall the ruling of the chair be sustained?”. Only 3 Conservative hands went up. “If you want to support the decision of the Chair, put up your hand,” Leon clarified looking around hopefully. The same 3 Conservative hands rose. He asked who was opposed and all the opposition members raised their hands. Leon looked down, grabbed his gavel and snapped, “this meeting is adjourned!” He then stormed out, leaving all in the room in a surprised paralysis. After a time, it was pointed out that the chair can't just declare the meeting over and walk out. So, Lui Temelkovski as our Liberal Vice-Chair took position and the meeting resumed.
Honestly, it was an embarrassing episode and, if it didn't reflect so poorly on the committee, it would have been extremely funny. Parliament can be a strange and weird place. Leon didn't do the Conservatives or parliament proud today.
… Now back to committee, Mr. Julian of the NDP just introduced a motion to oust Leon as the Chair. Man this is a zoo. Nav – I'm glad this is your committee.

In the last election campaign, Prime Minister Paul Martin spent the last few days of the campaign suggesting that a Harper government would move to restrict abortion access rights. Harper, for his part, said the grassroots of his party had voted in March, 2005 to preserve the status quo on abortion access rights — and Harper agreed with that position.

I can recall pointing out in some reports at the time the hypocrisy of Martin’s attacks because many members of the Liberal caucus then and now would, if they had the chance, vote to roll back abortion access rights.

And indeed, it is a Liberal that has a bill before the current Parliament that would restrict abortion access. Paul Steckle — who celebrates his birthday today, by the way — introduced Bill C-338 last June, a private members bill that, if passed into law, would make abortion illegal after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Steckle, I suspect, may speak about this at today’s March For Life demonstration on Parliament Hill.

His leader, Stephane Dion, was asked by reporters about that bill after Question Period yesterday:

Reporter:   One of your MPs, Paul Steckle, has Bill C-338.  It's a private member's bill to restrict abortion … I want to ask you about that.  [Thursday]'s the big March for Life.  Today the Pope was saying any Catholic that votes in favour of abortion is automatically excommunicated.  In light of that is 338 the type of bill you'd give a free vote to or —

Hon. Stéphane Dion: No, the party doesn't want to revisit this issue. 

Reporter:   But would it be a whipped vote then?  I mean it's one of your MPs that brought it forward.  Would you just tell your caucus to vote against it?

Hon. Stéphane Dion: I just want to say the point of view of the party is that we don't revisit this issue.

 

Dion is essentially responding to a hypothetical question here because private members bills almost never get passed. This bill, like similar bills before it over the last decade, may wither and die on the order paper or in committee.

But I point this out because, so far as I know,  Dion has not yet said how he or his party would handle a vote in the House on abortion access rights. If you’ve got a link or other information about Dion’s position on this issue, I’d be pleased to be corrected. Would he whip MPs? Whip his cabinet as Martin did on the same-sex marriage vote? Would he allow Liberals to vote their conscience?

This issue may come up again today for, if last year’s event was any indication, there will likely be several hundred people on Parliament Hill today to demonstrate in support of legislation like Steckle’s (I counted 2,200 last year; organizers said there were many times more than that). Last year at the March for Life event, many Conservative MPs — including Jason Kenney who would later become Secretary of State — joined three Liberal MPs on the speaker’s platform at this event. Those three Liberals were Steckle, Paul Szabo and Tom Wappel.

Harper is on the record that he would allow all Conservative MPs, including cabinet members, to vote as they see fit.

NDP leader Jack Layton and Bloc Quebecois Gilles Duceppe see the issue differently and would whip their MPs to vote to protect abortion access rights.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May, to my knowledge, has not said what she would do if she led a party in the House with MPs and such a vote came up but, when she ran in a by-election last year in London, she sounded personally uncomfortable with the issue of abortion though she she promised to fight for and defend her party’s platform which calls for the protection of abortion access rights.

The Canadian Press just moved this story:

OTTAWA (CP) _ A red-faced Tory MP is apologizing after his assistant impersonated him _ and provided false information _ in an e-mail exchange with a constituent over the hot-button issue of Afghan detainees.

An e-mail from Gord Brown's parliamentary office, dated May 2, claimed that every alleged case of abuse involving Afghan detainees had been investigated and proven to be unfounded. That despite the fact the Afghan government has yet to finish an investigation into the torture claims.

The e-mail to Randi Davidson, obtained by The Canadian Press, was signed by Brown, the member for Leeds-Grenville. But Brown says the note was written by his assistant, Mark King, without his knowledge.

“Those are not my views. They don't reflect my view. That staff member has been reprimanded for sending that out,'' Brown (left) said in an interview.

“He shouldn't have sent it out to begin with and he shouldn't have sent it out with my name it on. I'm not very happy about it.''

And here is the letter Brown’s constituent received :

From: Brown, Gord – M.P. [mailto:Brown.G@parl.gc.ca]

Sent: May 2, 2007 11:32 AM

To: Randi Davidson’

Subject: RE: disgusting

Randi,

Thank you for this email.

My assistant Mark King showed me your previous correspondence along with his response and the only thing I can do is confirm what he has written to you.

Let me try to explain by responding to your latest email step by step.

Neither Mark nor the Prime Minister are in the habit of telling lies.

Every report of abuse, upon investigation, has been found to have originated with the Taliban. It may arrive here via different channels, but the originating source is always the same.

The key to this is that the complaints are investigated.

The second key to this is the fact that the people who are making the complaints to westerners are the same people who rape, kill and jail women and female children, who conscript male children into their “army” and who blow up aid workers and kill our soldiers. The soldiers and the aid workers have been invited to Afghanistan by the now democratically elected government to help the country recover from decades of abuse at the hands of these same people who are now saying they are being abused.

There are 60 countries involved in this UN sanctioned mission and every one of them is hearing the same thing from the Taliban. They have been hearing it from the very first day of the mission. The Liberals heard it when they were in government. We heard it when they were in government.

It has only been in the past three weeks that the Liberals have decided to bring this to the House of Commons – where they have privilege by the way – and make these allegations public. They are doing this strictly for political gain. If they truly believed any of these allegations they would have acted a long time ago. They, after all, publicly sent our soldiers and aid workers to Afghanistan in 2002.

The Maher Arar case did not occur under our watch. This was a Liberal issue.

The final issue you address is the Prime Minister's staff. The Prime Minister – and other government officials – are allotted a budget for staff each year. They are free to allocate it as they see fit. I will forward your comments to him.

Jennifer Ditchburn's story is what is called in journalism a “sidebar.” Journalists are trained to take any news story and stretch it out in as many ways as they possibly can. Think of a spider's web. The story is at the centre of the web and there are many spokes reaching out in many different directions. It can be like following a family tree. What is at the end can have little resemblance to the initial story.

Journalists have also not been able to find any evidence of abuse so they are “growing” the story to keep it alive.

If you use the Arar story as a comparison, as Jennifer is doing, there they were able to find evidence of abuse. Here they can not.

My assistant Mark is a journalist by profession. He has many contacts in the industry including one of the international producers at CNN. He is in contact with him about what journalists in Afghanistan are turning up on this story. It is exactly the same information. The Taliban has a well-rehearsed on-going campaign directed at the westerners.

There is little else to say about this issue.

Gord

Gord Brown, Member of Parliament

Leeds-Grenville

810 Justi <<image001.jpg>> ce Building

Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6

Tel: 613-992-8756

Fax: 613-996-9171

The latest voter intentions survey from Nik Nanos’ firm SES Research has the federal Conservatives and Liberals in a dead heat with the Green Party gaining ground. In fact, for the first time in the polling history of SES, the Green Party has more “national” support than the Bloc Quebecois.

“A combination of factors have been at play in the past month including focus on the new Conservative Environmental Plan and a greater focus on the Afghanistan Mission. This all adds up to a political stalement. What has also been interesting in the past few months is the steady decline of the BQ and the major voter swings in Quebec between the Liberals and the Conservatives,” Nanos says on his blog.

Here’s the numbers (the number in brackets is the percentage point change from the pollsters’s last foray in the field with this question, on April 5)  :

For those parties you would consider voting for federally, could you please rank your top two current local preferences? (Committed Voters Only – First Choice)

1. Liberal 33% (0)
2. Conservative Party 32% (-4)
3. NDP 17% (+1)
4. Green Party 10% (+4)
5. BQ 9%(-1)

The survey of 1,000 voters was done between April 26 and May 1. The pollster says the results are accurate to within 3.4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

This just in from the University of Guelph:

New U of G Study Shows Politics Affects Judicial Appointments

When it comes to judicial appointments, politics appear to be influencing selection, according to new research by a University of Guelph political scientist.

Troy Riddell examined 978 judicial appointments between 1988 and 2003 and found at least 30 per cent of judges appointed during the Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien years made donations to the political party in power.

“That seems high, especially when you consider that less than one per cent of Canadians donate to federal political parties,” Riddell said. “Although individuals with political ties can be very fine judges, it does raise concerns that sometimes weaker candidates are appointed because of patronage.” <>

The study, which is scheduled to be published in the University of Toronto Law Journal in 2008, also shows that most of those judges made a donation within two years of being appointed to the bench.

These results raise larger concerns about the legitimacy of the judicial process, said Riddell.

“Every once in a while you hear stories about people appointed as judges as a reward for their political service,” said Riddell, who worked on the project with Lori Hausegger of Boise State University and Matthew Hennigar of Brock University. “So we wanted to test that out systematically and try to figure out how the selection committees were actually working.”

In response to accusations of partisan influence, the federal government changed the judicial appointment process in 1988 by setting up screening committees, said Riddell. These committees are supposed to objectively evaluate the applications and recommend to the minister of justice who should and who shouldn’t be appointed.

“Patronage appointments were supposed to be addressed with the creation of the screening committees, but that obviously hasn’t happened to a satisfactory degree,” he said.

One possible reason is that, under the current appointment process, the committees screen names provided by the government rather than collect the names of candidates independently, he said.

The issue of patronage appointments is becoming increasingly important as Canadian judges continue to gain more legal authority, he said. Judges now have the power to create policies and strike down laws under the Charter of Rights.

“They have the power to decide on issues ranging from the legalization of marijuana to abortion to healthcare and anti-terrorism. Even in non-charter cases, they make decisions that impact people’s lives.”

A quartet of Quebec-based academics took a look at the coverage of four newspapers during the most recent Quebec provincial election campaign and found no evidence of bias:

Quebec voters who selected their election season newspapers based on the expectation that their
paper’s news coverage would be tilted toward favoured candidates were disappointed, according to a campaign news analysis conducted by McGill University’s Observatory of Media and Public Policy.

The study took a look at coverage in Le Devoir, The Gazette, La Presse, and Le Soleil .  While the study’s authors praised the neutral tone of coverage, they felt that the newspapers they studied focused too much on the “horse race” aspect of the election and not enough on some of the policy issues debated during the election.

Voters reading any one of the four papers throughout March learned a lot more about the polls than they did about where any of the candidates wanted to take Quebec if they won the election. Vital issues like education, immigration, the environment and national unity were all given short shrift in favour of an overemphasis on daily poll standings. . . .[but] The results of our study suggest that Quebec’s leading newspapers deserve high marks on the fairness of campaign news coverage, but far lower marks for their treatment of policy matters.

My friend and former colleague Joel-Denis Bellavance reports in this morning’s La Presse that the Liberal governments of 2002 and later knew that Afghanistan authorities were likely to torture or abuse those they captured as suspected Taliban operatives or sympathizers.

The Liberals, of course, have spent all week accusing the Conseratives of covering up these allegations.

L'ancien gouvernement libéral avait été prévenu par des diplomates canadiens en poste à Kaboul, en 2003, 2004 et 2005, que la torture était une pratique courante dans les prisons afghanes.

Malgré ces avertissements, le gouvernement Martin a décidé de signer une entente avec le gouvernement Karzaï, en décembre 2005, afin de livrer aux autorités afghanes tous les prisonniers capturés par les soldats canadiens, révèlent des documents du ministère des Affaires étrangères obtenus par La Presse.

Entre 2002 et 2005, le Canada avait l'habitude de remettre aux Américains les prisonniers afghans soupçonnés d'avoir des liens avec les talibans. Mais Ottawa a décidé de négocier une entente de transfert des prisonniers avec les autorités afghanes, à la suite de la controverse provoquée par les mauvais traitements au centre de détention militaire américain de Guantánamo, à Cuba, et les tortures infligées aux prisonniers par des militaires américains à la prison d'Abou Ghraib, en Irak.

Read the rest of the story

The Associated Press reports that Howard Dean, the president of the Democratic Party, believes voters would be better off if reporters were banned from all-candidates meetings and unable, as result, to tell voters what candidates actually said.

“The media has been reduced to info-tainment,” Dean said. “Info-tainment sells; the problem is they reach the lowest common denominator instead of forcing a little education down our throats, which we are probably in need of from time to time.”

National Press Club President Jerry Zremski lashed out at Dean for suggesting barring the media.

“Has Dean read the First Amendment? The Founding Fathers knew that a free press is central to the free flow of information to the citizenry — and that the free flow of information is the very foundation of a democracy. Repressing media is a tactic one expects from totalitarian regimes, not democracies,” Zremski said.

Tip of the toque to Deb Jones at Canadian Journalist.