David Akin’s On The Hill

The Assembly of First Nations used its time in front of the House of Commons Finance Committee yesterday to ask for help for aboriginal children in Canada. The finance committee is taking pre-budget submissions. Why do they need help? Here’s some of the bullet points provided by AFN researchers.

• Better than one of every ten First Nations children living on reserve in Canada is living in foster care on welfare. By comparison, only about one of every 100 non-native, off-reserver children is in such care.
• On a per-child basis, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada provides about 33 per cent less funding, the AFN says, compared to the average amount provincial governments set aside for care of non-native, off-reserve children.
• 22,000 First Nation children are in the care of child welfare agencies across Canada. The key factor for taking children into care is physical neglect due to poverty. 38 per cent of cases have been exposed to family violence as the substantiated form of maltreatment leading to placement.

A few months ago, the House of Commons International Trade Committee talked to International Trade Minister David Emerson about a free trade agreement with Korea. During his testimony at that time, Emerson referred to some studies his department had commissioned to assess the economic impact in Canada of a free trade agreement with Korea. NDP MP and committee member Peter Julian successfully moved a motion at Committee asking for those reports. I immediately filed an Access to Information Request to receive those reports and asked Emerson if he would not just release them. That was a few months ago.

In the meantime, the Canadian Auto Workers went about its own economic impact study of a Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA). On Monday night, CAW president Buzz Hargrove told Emerson’s office it was going to release those studies today.

And then — in the sort of coincidence that makes reporters suspicious — the governnment’s economic impact studies that Julian and I had asked for were posted online at a government Web site some time around 8 pm Ottawa time with zero fanfare or announcement. We learned they were posted online when Hargrove told us at a morning press conference today.

Hargrove said that the government’s economic impact studies show that, even in the “best-case” scenario, a Korean FTA would have little positive impact on the Canadian economy. Indeed, one of the conclusions — written by Industry Canada researchers — says:

“An elimination of the Korean automotive tariff alone would have a negligible impact on Canadian automotive exports. Even a large increase in exports of parts or vehicles would be insignificant when compared to our overall exports.”

Back in June, Emerson told the international trade committee:

“The Canada-Korea potential free trade agreement does have the potential to offer substantial benefits to Canada, we've quantified them and modeled them, they're well in excess of a half a bill dollars, perhaps upwards into the $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year range. It's not that we're trying to get into a free trade agreement that is going to be harmful to Canada: quite the contrary.”

The CAW’s studies, you won’t be surprised to learn, show that a Korean FTA would cause massive job losses in the Canadian automotive sector.

In any event —  I asked Emerson about the status of the Korean FTA negotations in a post-Question Period scrum on Monday and he said, “To be honest, we are nowhere near a free-trade agreement with Korea. “

Hargrove met with Emerson today and said their meeting was a good one and that Emerson seemed sympathetic to the points he was making.

Still not sure what all the secrecy was about when it comes to those economic impact studies and why they had to be quietly posted online at 8 pm. The only people who do that sort of thing are people who are usually trying to hide something …

 

The House of Commons Finance Committee began accepting pre-budget submissions today from various interest groups. John McCallum (left), the former chief economist at the Royal Bank of Canada and the current finance critic in the Liberal caucus, opened up the Liberal discussions on the next budget with the following ‘framing statement’ (I have lightly edited it):

“It is bordering on fraudulent or insulting to invite Canadians to submit budget proposals on competitiveness when the last budget emptied the fiscal cupboard while doing essentially nothing for productivity or competitiveness. [The] latest numbers from [governnment and private sector experts] indicate less than $2 billion per year until the end of the decade, and that's before paying anything for fiscal imbalance, environment, Afghanistan extension, etc.

So one of our focuses will be to ask people whether last year's budget did anything for their competitiveness or productivity.”

The last time gunboats sailed the Great Lakes with angry sailors intent on shooting something was the War of 1812. Since then, the Great Lakes have remained largely free of gunboats from either the U.S. or Canada. But now, in this new age of terror, the U.S. is prepared to anchor machine guns to the decks of U.S. Coast Guard ships patrolling the Great Lakes.

The Coast Guard plans to train its personnel to shoot these weapons and is asking for comment on the idea of cordoning off certain areas of the Great Lakes to conduct live fire training exercises. Though these Great Lakes are a shared bi-national resource, the U.S. Coast Guard, at this point, plans to hold meetings only in Minnesota, Michigan, and Ohio.

The first Question Period in the House of Commons got underway today with a moment of silence to remember the victims of Dawson College.

Shortly after, Opposition Leader Bill Graham led off with a related question: Why would the Conservatives want to eliminate the gun registry? “How will weakening the registry benefit all Canadians?” Graham asked.

Prime Minister Harper said the registry was not effective. “Today's laws did not affect us.”

Harper told the House that he has asked the RCMP to present his government with some suggestions on how best to prevent “an unstable individual as [Gill] from getting hold of firearms.”

Some other notes:

Number of cabinet ministers absent from Question Period; 2 (MacKay and Flaherty)

Number of Liberal leadership candidates in the House: 2 of a possible 6 (Brison and Ignatieff present)

Number of former prime ministers present for QP: 0

Note: The Liberals have slightly rearranged their seating plan. Michael Ignatieff is no longer on the back bench. He's moved up one row and is now in the fourth row with Liberal Ken Dryden to his right and Bloc MP Gaudet to his left.

In fact, all leadership candidates are down by the Bloc.

Volpe is in the front row. Behind him is Dion, behind him is Brison, behind him is Ignatieff. Fry sits next to Dion and Dryden is next to Iggy.

Ottawa South MP David McGuinty will throw his support behind Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff at an Iggy campaign event at the Holiday Inn in Kanata. Sources say McGuinty was looking at both Dion and Ignatieff but decided to support Ignatieff because he likes Ignatieff’s environment plan better than Dion’s environment plan.

 

You may recall that CTV ran a blog during the last election campaign. Well, we’ve got another one going and I’m one of the posters. Drop by and say hello. I’ll be cross-posting political stuff here and there for the foreseeable future.