Today could be it – the last day of the spring session of the House. Maybe. It all hinges on that back-to-work legislation, and how long the opposition is able to hold it up. The government intends to pass it before the end of the day, and are willing to keep sitting tomorrow and into the weekend to pass it. The complicating factor? That tomorrow is St. Jean Baptiste Day, the “national holiday” of Quebec which they treat as their own provincial Canada Day. With an NDP caucus full of Quebec MPs and a leader who is eager to get some photo ops in Quebec on such a day, they will be under some pressure to be out of the House and get to these events in their ridings. The other complicating factor? Talks between Canada Post and the union broke down again. So will there be a genuine filibuster? Or a token resistance before a final climb-down by the NDP (after which they declare moral victory of course) in time for their MPs to get back to their ridings? Stay tuned…
Those reams of Afghan detainee documents were released yesterday, at long last. Stéphane Dion, the Liberal MP on the panel, says that because we lost track of several detainees and were slow in informing the Red Cross about some prisoner transfers, it’s likely some of the detainees we handed over were tortured or abused. The Conservatives, however, as spinning this as confirmation that they were right all along, and there’s no story here, but thanks for wasting $12 million on the process, opposition parties. That’s right – the old “trust us” line. Because that always works so well.
The CBC provides those tabled documents here – and puts out a request for crowd sourcing. If anyone wants to go through documents to find questionable things, now’s your chance.
John Geddes characterises the government’s tarring anyone asking questions about the handling of prisoners as not being supportive of the troops as a “low slur.”
The Canadian general in charge of the NATO mission in Libya says he’s not going to stop the bombing missions, lest Gadhafi’s forces use the time to re-arm, and that humanitarian aid is already getting through so there’s no point in stopping.
Paul Wells gets a late sort-of answer on the job cuts at Public Works as part of his quest to find out just what the cuts the government booked in the budget actually were.
And not a big surprise here, but Elizabeth May wants the cuts to climate science reversed.