Prime Minister Stephen Harper: Funny guy. Video surfaces of Harper doing (killer) impression of Joe Clark (not bad) impression of Brian Mulroney and (a bit over the top) impression of Preston Manning. Shot during rehearsal for 2011 election night in Calgary presumably by company hired by the party to do its election night work. So far as I know, this was not shot by an Canadian media outlet.
In the 2004 general election, the then brand new Conservative Party of Canada promised Canadians:
We will increase the power of individual Members of Parliament
The Plan :
- A Conservative government led by Stephen Harper will make all votes, except the budget and main estimates, “free votes” for ordinary Members of Parliament.
- A Conservative government will allow Parliament to review and ratify important appointments, such as Officers of Parliament, Supreme Court Justices, and heads of major Crown corporations and agencies.
- A Conservative government will increase the power of Parliament and Parliamentary Committees to review the spending estimates of Departments and hold Ministers to account.
The Conservatives lost in 2004 but held Paul Martin’s Liberals to a minority and then forced an election in late 2005. Voters went to the polls in early 2006. The Conservatives made the following commitments in its 2006 platform: Continue reading Once, Stephen Harper promised: "We will increase the powers of members of Parliament"
Last night, after watching his private members bill get gutted by his own caucus colleagues, Edmonton MP Brent Rathgeber quit the Conservative caucus and announced he will sit as an independent MP. This morning, on his blog, he indicted his former colleagues…
Clearly, the Government’s decision not to support my Private Member’s Bill on CBC and Public Sector disclosure and transparency in Committee was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back; however, this decision and my comfort level in caucus has been evolving for at least a year when I first spoke out against Ministerial opulence in a blog entitled “Of Orange Juice and Limos.”
Recent allegations concerning expense scandals and the Government’s response has been extremely troubling. I joined the Reform/conservative movements because I thought we were somehow different, a band of Ottawa outsiders riding into town to clean the place up, promoting open government and accountability. I barely recognize ourselves, and worse I fear that we have morphed into what we once mocked.
My constituents demand better.
My constituents simply do not care what somebody, who they hope will never become Prime Minister, did or didn’t do seventeen years ago. They do care, however, about the relations between a sitting Senator and Langevin Block PMO. For a government that was elected on a platform of accountability, my constituents are gravely disappointed. They appreciate human frailty but when a group misses its self-proclaimed standards, a little contrition and humility not blust and blunder, is the expectation.To say that we are somehow better than the other guys is similarly woefully inadequate. If we are measuring our ethical performance against the Sponsorship Scandalized Liberals, perhaps we need to set our ethical bar a little higher.I have reluctantly come to the inescapable conclusion that the Government’s lack of support for my transparency bill is tantamount to a lack of support for transparency and open government generally.
Read the rest: Brent’s Blog | Brent Rathgeber | Member of Parliament for Edmonton -St. Albert.
Heriberto Araújo and Juan Pablo Cardenal are the authors of China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking The World in Beijing’s Image. Today in the New York Times, they have a long interesting piece in which they argue that China’s “state capitalism” represents a real threat to the West and to the values — the rule of law, political freedom and fair competition — important to the West. And Canada — “a progressive bastion” — gets a prominent mention:
Europeans and Americans [and Canadians for that matter] tend to fret over Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea, its territorial disputes with Japan, and cyberattacks on Western firms, but all of this is much less important than a phenomenon that is less visible but more disturbing: the aggressive worldwide push of Chinese state capitalism…
Continue reading The disturbing push of aggressive Chinese state capitalism
Just distributed to the Parliamentary Press Gallery at 10:30 pm ET this evening from Senator Marjory LeBreton, the leader of the government in the Senate. Read it for yourself. My only comment would be that LeBreton has been the leader of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government in the Senate for 7 years now and her party has had an absolute majority in that chamber for more than three years now. So I don’t think it’s inappropriate to ask: What the heck took so long?! Anyhow, I’ll get out of the way now and let Sen. LeBreton continue :
“Our Government is focused on delivering meaningful reform to the Senate – including elections, term limits and tough spending oversight.
“Canadians understand that our Senate, as it stands today, must either change, or like the old Upper Houses of our provinces, vanish. Continue reading Senate adopts "11 tough new rules" on expenses
The country’s librarians and archivists never had a good feeling from the start about Daniel Caron, the economist appointed in 2009 by Heritage Minister James Moore to be Canada’s Librarian and Archivist of Canada, partly because, they felt, his professional training and pedigree was as an economist. (He did a postgraduate degree in economics at Laval and then a doctorate in “applied human sciences” at the Université de Montréal.) Caron, in 2009, was also taking over what was described as a newly “unified” institution. Rather than have separate two separate positions — a national Librarian and a Chief Archivist — both jobs were going to “unified” in one office and Caron was picked to make it a success.
Continue reading Who should be Canada's national librarian? A librarian or an economist?
As Thomas Mulcair and the federal NDP began their “Abolish the Senate” campaign, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau argues to keep the Senate the way it is, after all, with all those senators from Quebec’s, it’s all good for Quebec! Continue reading Justin Trudeau: Senate is Quebec's secret weapon!
Adrienne Batra is my Sun Media colleague, responsible for the comment pages in the Toronto Sun. But before taking up that role, she had been press secretary to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.
In Sunday’s @thetorontosun in which I try to answer a q I’m constantly asked – Who’s advising the mayor?torontosun.com/2013/05/25/who… #TOPoli
— Adrienne Batra (@AdrienneBatra) May 25, 2013
Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley ruled tonight on the “robocalls” case, the attempt by a handful of voters in six ridings, backed by the Council of Canadians, to have the 2011 election results in those ridings thrown out and new elections ordered because, the applicants alleged, there was widespread voter suppression using “robocalls” and possibly other means to do so. The Council of Canadians alleges the Conservative Party of Canada was the bad guy.
Here’s the questions Mosley asked and I have summed up his answers: Continue reading The Federal Court fraudulent call judgement: short version
Conservative partisans are angry about this Senate expense scandal. They are angry at Senators Duffy and Wallin for getting them in this mess and they are angry at many others — mostly in the media — who aren’t giving them the benefit of the doubt on all this stuff. On Parliament Hill, that sentiment is largely voiced by Conservative MPs and senators who wish to remain anonymous. But on Wednesday in the Senate, Senator Marjory LeBreton, the leader of the government in the Senate, gave a remarkable speech which, though I thought many parts of it wrong-headed, seems to capture the mood among many Conservative partisans. Continue reading Those Liberal elites and their media lickspittles!
