Bob Rae gave a big speech on the economy
yesterday, full of pretty familiar points about EI premiums and refundable tax
credits, and not being made to choose between the Tea Party and the Occupiers.
He did say some new things about the need to reform and simply the tax
structure in the country, and kept up the narrative he started back to that
first big speech to caucus that revived the word “prosperity” as a political
buzzword, but I guess we’ll see how this filters out into actual policy.
Opposition MPs on the Access to
Information, Privacy and Ethics committee may continue to boycott the hearings
on the CBC’s Access to Information documents depending on legal advice they get
from the Commons law clerk about whether or not the Conservatives’ demanding
those documents violates established legal principles.
Kady O’Malley gives us a great timeline of
the Auditor General selection process, including the fact that the headhunting
knew his French was “limited” back during the election.
Two NDP MPs are headed to Washington to
talk about the Keystone XL Pipeline, while also raising concerns about the
sense of inevitability as the company behind it is stockpiling pipeline
components and sending them to the States.
The curious tale of the chair of the
Security and Intelligence Review Committee gets even more interesting, with
tales of using an Ambassador Plenipotentiary title with the president of Sierra
Leone to offer Canadian senators jobs, and the like. Kady O’Malley notes that
Dr. Porter donated the maximum amount to the Conservatives between the year he
was named to SIRC and when he was made its chair, for what it’s worth.
First Jason Kenney wanted groups to
privately sponsor more queer refugees – and now the department is talking caps on privately sponsored refugees being accepted in the interest of fighting the
backlog – only caps haven’t done anything about the backlog in the past, nor
does it acknowledge the reason why the refugee backlog exists (hint: the
Conservatives didn’t fill positions on the IRB when they became available).
And Aaron Wherry asks some pretty
disturbing questions about the relevance of the House of Commons in the wake of
all of these time allocations on bills.
