Category: Politics

Yesterday afternoon, at about 4:30, someone in Environment Minister John Baird’s office went to a fax machine, looked up the fax number for one of Baird’s offices, punched the number into the machine, and sent off some confidential documents containing elements of the Government’s green plan.

But there was a problem: The fax number in the directory that the staffer relied on had an error. It was wrong. The staffer had misdialed. Now, most of the time, when someone misdials a fax number, it ends up going to a regular voice line — we’ve all heard that annoying screech when a fax machine gets a wrong number — but in this case, by some great fluke, the staffer who misdialed hit another fax machine — the one in the Opposition Lobby in the House of Commons!

And so it was that a Liberal staffer waltzed by and picked up the fax, saw that it was about Environment stuff and figured it must be for the Liberal Environment Critic David McGuinty. A page delived the misdirected fax to McGuinty while he was sitting in the House of Commons waiting to vote on a couple of motions last night.

McGuinty realized he had something hot so, at about 6:30 or so, he, Stephane Dion, and senior Opposition Leader Office staff gathered to decide what to do.

And so it was that about 8:20 pm last night, the call went out to news organizations that McGuinty was to hold a press conference at the unusual hour of 8:40 pm.

McGuinty would announce that he had received details of Baird’s environmental plan — due to be officially released tomorrow in Toronto — and that it had market-moving information in it. McGuinty called on Baird to immediately release the plan and to call in the RCMP to determine how such a mistake could be made. After all, if it was faxed in error to the Opposition, it could have been faxed in error to anyone.

The Liberals made no copies of the documents they received and refused to tell us what was in the document. McGuinty said he was taking the copies up to the House of Commons Sergeant-At-Arms and would give them to him.

So we immediately started putting out calls to the Governnment and got quick responses from Baird’s office. Turns out what McGuinty had received was a draft of a speech that Baird was planning to give tomorrow, a few hours ahead of the actual release of his plan. The actual plan had not been divulged.

Baird’s office decided to post the whole speech — as yet undelivered — on its Web site.

And so that’s how, this morning, we have some idea of what Baird will announce tomorrow. You can read the leaked speech for yourself and you will find these points:

• Today (at about 9:30 am Ottawa time), Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn will ban the use of incandescent lightbulbs.
• Within 5 years, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions will start to drop, and will be cut by 20 per cent compared to today’s levels by 2020.

Many more details to be released today and tomorrow. Stay tuned.

While Canada’s government yesterday was telling everyone that meeting the country’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol will put Canada into its worst recession since the Second World War, the U.S. General Accounting Office — a rough equivalent to the Auditor General here — was telling legislators in the U.S. that the effects of climate change will force U.S. federal insurers to pay out billions over the coming years …

Recent assessments by leading scientific bodies provide sufficient cause for concern that climate change may have a broad range of long-term consequences for the United States and its citizens. While a number of key uncertainties regarding the timing, location, and magnitude of impactsremain, climate change has implications for the fiscal health of the federal government, which already faces other significant challenges in meeting its long-term fiscal obligations. [National Flood Insurance Program] and [Federal Crop Insurance Corporation] are two major federal programs which, as a consequence of both future climate change and substantial growth in exposure, may see their losses grow by many billions of dollars in coming decades.

Bev Oda, Minister for the Status of Women, told the House of Commons yesterday that the first woman elected to the House of Commons was a Conservative. That brought a quick rejoinder from NDP MP Irene Mathyssen who says Agnes McPhail was a proud socialist and a founding member of the CCF, the predecessor party to the NDP.

Oda: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise this morning to speak to the importance of encouraging the greater participation of women in our democratic system of government.

In a democratic country, the governing body must endeavour to reflect the population that it is elected to represent, and Canada's diversity can best be served with the same diversity in the House. We will be enriched by the contribution of a true mix of the unique experiences, backgrounds and skills that our citizens possess.

Recognizing the contribution to be made by women in government must be promoted and encouraged. Canadian women have contributed to the building of our country in countless ways. They have had a significant role to play in our history and must have a key role in determining our future.

…   

The government does support every earnest effort to increase women's representation and their participation in politics. Because we recognize and welcome the contribution of women in this role, it was the Conservative Party that elected the first woman in the House of Commons as well as the first woman prime minister…

Mathyssen (left):     …    I … feel compelled to correct the record. The minister has perpetuated a Conservative claim to the first woman elected to this House. In fact, history and Hansard will confirm that Agnes Macphail was certainly not a Conservative. A committed pacifist and a progressive, she fought for seniors pensions, farmers' rights and social democratic causes like prison reform. She was a founding member of the CCF. Most people forget that she was also one of the first two women elected to the Ontario legislature. I certainly hope the minister will check her history books and refrain from tarnishing the good name of Agnes Macphail who was a proud social democrat.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May (left) writes a letter to her members about her deal with Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion:

“Please be prepared for this historic step to be misunderstood and deliberately mis-characterized. Adriane Carr, Deputy Leader, is running in Vancouver Centre. We have made it a priority that she win, defeating Liberal incumbent Hedy Fry (by the way, Mr. Dion never asked me to withdraw or alter any other ridings than those of the leaders.) Across Canada, Greens will be running against Liberals. We have significant (huge, when one considers NAFTA and other policy areas) disagreements.

Campaigns of Greens across Canada must be stronger and we must elect a solid caucus, not one or two MPs in the next election. Thus, it is clear we are not “endorsing” Liberals. The Green Party is emphatically against strategic voting. But in the archaic first past the post system, how else is the Green Party to work to ensure the democratic will of the majority is heard? How else can we signal cooperation , not competitiveness, is our core value?

Your support through letters to the editor, etc would be appreciated. Thanks for your support, for your patience, and if you have misgivings, for your openness to the potential for real change. We live in interesting times and they just got a lot more interesting.

 

With all the Vimy stuff, I’ve been involved in over the last few days, I’ve neglected the release of some new polling data from SES Research.

On Sunday, SES released their latest voting intentions survey. It’s a mixed bag for the two main parties. Depending on which slice of data you want to look at, the news is marginally good or marginally bad for both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

Here’s the big picture nationally

“For those parties you would consider voting for federally, could you please rank your top current local preferences?”

1. Conservative – 36 % (up 3 percentage points since SES most recent poll on Feb. 8)
2. Liberal – 33 % (no change since last poll)
3. NDP – 16 % (-1)
4. BQ – 10% (no change)
5. Green – 6 % (-1)

For this poll, 1,000 Canadians were surveyed between March 31 and April 5. The pollster says the results are accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

So, things are moving up for the Tories but, according to SES President Nik Nanos, “the Conservatives are still short of forming a majority government.”

Meanwhile, the Liberals are staying put and haven’t budged from where they were in the last federal election.  So some might say that, despite near universal poor reviews from the pundit class in Ottawa on his performance, Stephane Dion is not hurting his party. On the other hand, Dion doesn’t seem to be helping his party.

But Nanos says there is trouble for the Liberals in Quebec:

However, the federal budget, Quebec provincial election results and the new advertising scandal arrest has put downward pressure on Liberal support in Quebec. The Liberals have dropped nine points in Quebec in the past 60 days. Research conducted by SES has shown that in the past there is a direct relationship between federal Liberal support in Quebec and any new revelations regarding the sponsorship scandal. It is too early to tell whether the Liberal drop is short term or not.

Here’s the numbers SES has for Quebec only:

1. BQ – 37 % (-2 percentage points)
2. Conservatives – 28 % (+8)
3. Liberal – 18% (-9)
4. NDP – 13% (+5)
5. Green – 4% (-2)

For this poll, 244 Quebecers were surveyed. The pollster says it is accurate to within 6.4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

And finally, there’s some new data from SES today, which surveys Canadians as to their opinion of which federal leader would make the best Prime Minister. Here’s the results:

1. Stephen Harper 42%
2. Stephane Dion 17%
3. Jack Layton 16%
4. Gilles Duceppe 7%
5. Elizabeth May 4%
6. None of them 7%
7. Unsure 6%

This poll was done between March 31 and April 5. One thousand Canadians were asked this “read and rotate” question — respondents are read a list of the leaders and asked to select one, and the order in which the respondent hears the choices is rotated — and the pollster says the results were accurate to within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

This is good news. Anti-poverty activist Daniel Haran has written some code which lets you match postal codes to federal Members of Parliament. His goal — and likely the goal of many other activists — is to harness the power of the databases for political and social justice purposes. Now you'd think it would be dead simple to get a list of postal codes mapped to members of Parliament and if you thought that way you would be mistaken. It's dead simple if you're well-funded professional marketing agency and can afford to pay the federal government thousands of dollars for this data. Don't get me started …
In the meantime, Haran has made the dataset available in a variety of formats that should let you plug it in easily into whatever spreadsheet or database application you're using. Grab it now before the government sues him to shut it down!

Technorati Tags: journalism

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.