Author: Dale Smith

It was only after the first cursory question from Turmel on the usual subject of the OAS that she asked about the big story of the day – the new refugee reform bill that was tabled that morning. After all, it was only 20 months ago that a bill passed

The votes are in, and the bill to scrap the long-gun registry has passed the Commons on a vote of 159 to 130, and the bill is now off to the Senate. NDP MPs John Rafferty and Bruce Hyer voted for the bill, just as they did the last time around, so

The Twitter Machine was abuzz today with that anonymous account posting all of the details about Vic Toews’ divorce papers. It was done under the aegis that if Vic Toews wants to invade people’s online privacy through Lawful Access, then this account was going to invade Toews’ privacy. Err, except

QP was off to an abrupt start after the Speaker shut down Conservative MP Jim Hillyer’s attempted attack against Justin Trudeau in a Member’s Statement, and Turmel was up, and decried the fact that making budget cuts too fast could

The Lawful Access bill came down yesterday, and Vic Toews gave it a torque short title – the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act,” thus making it magically immune from criticism, lest you be on the side of the child pornographers. Never mind that the words “children” or “predators” doesn’t appear in

It's not uncommon to hear complaints about the state of debate in the Commons these days, but looking into the Commons during government orders does fill one with a bit of despair. Years allowing the Standing Orders to slide and be undermined are turning debates in the House to irrelevance.

It was all hands on deck today, with Turmel, Harper and Rae all in the House. We were spared the worst of mawkish MP tributes to their spouses during Members’ Statements, and only a smattering of Valentines-themed statements made it through (seriously, guys – they’re not clever. Just stop), and

It was all hands on deck today, with Turmel, Harper and Rae all in the House. We were spared the worst of mawkish MP tributes to their spouses during Members’ Statements, and only a smattering of Valentines-themed statements made it through (seriously, guys – they’re not clever. Just stop), and

The discussions on the omnibus crime bill over in the Senate are about to get a hell of a lot more interesting after an Ontario judge has ruled that mandatory minimum sentences are unconstitutional, because the removal of judicial discretion means that said mandatory minimum may in effect mean cruel and

While both Harper and Turmel were absent from the House today, we did see John Baird take his seat for the first time in 2012, seeing as he’s been on the road the past couple of weeks. Not that we heard much from him either today, seeing as he was

Harper is back from China, and it’s all talk about possible future free trade agreements and pandas. Not that everyone is convinced by just how much success was had with the trip, and how much of it as just photo ops to cap off deals that had long-since been negotiated. Or that this

The third official NDP leadership debate took place in Quebec City this afternoon, conducted almost entirely in French. The topic was foreign policy, and lo and behold, you can rest assured that there was more violent agreement. (Note: If you want commentary on the quality of the French, you’ll have

While we await Sunday’s NDP leadership debate from Quebec City – the first fully French event that is going to tax the bilingual capacities of the seven candidates – here’s a piece from Joan Bryden to keep you busy in the meantime. Bryden actually went and waded through the policy documents of

Romeo Saganash is dropping out of the NDP leadership race, in part because of a family illness that is demanding his time and attention. That still leaves seven candidates in the race, who will debate in Quebec City this Sunday. The Liberals in Toronto-Danforth have nominated ad executive Grant Gordon as their candidate in

I caught up with Liberal MP Scott Brison after QP yesterday to ask him about what is keeping him busy this winter. Q: What did you get up to over the break? A: Getting caught up on a lot of

With neither Harper nor Turmel in the House today, it was up to Joe Comartin to lead the moral indignation against the CSIS directives that allow for the use of information obtained by torture, and acting once again as back-up PM, Peter MacKay got to replay hypothetical 24-like scenarios where

The NDP private member’s bill that would force a by-election after a floor crossing died after a vote in the Commons last night, as well it should. Bitter comments from NDP MPs over the Liberals voting it down because of Lise St-Denis aside, I do think that floor crossing does have a

As I continued with my round up of queer MPs, I caught up with NDP MP Libby Davies after QP yesterday. Q: What did you get up to over the break? A: I worked in the riding. We did a very successful roundtable discussion in Victoria the day ahead of

Trying to make a big impact from the starting gate, Nycole Turmel stood up and started listing off the various social conservative evils that the Conservatives are contemplating – opening up the debates on capital punishment and abortion, and now

The New Democrats are planning to spend their opposition day on Thursday debating a motion on changing the foreign investment act, in light of the Electro-Motive Diesel shutdown in London, Ontario. That said, I’m not sure that EMD is really the best case for condemning the Foreign Investment Act, considering that the