Regular readers of this blog will know that I maintain a sort of quixotic respect for our late lamented friend, the principle of ministerial responsibility. You’ll find it in the obituaries section of the Canada Gazette. It’s the principle which, until really very recently, obligated any senior politician in government
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The Sixth Estate: New Data Confirms Sixth Estate Estimate: Navy Shipbuilding Plan to Cost $100+ Billion
As other political bloggers know, there’s no feeling quite like vindication without attribution. Which I felt this week after parsing the latest data from Public Works and from the Parliamentary Budget Officer on the cost of the Joint Support Ship. A couple months ago, I predicted that the true cost
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Has a Canadian Government Actually Been Brought Down by Corruption?
I mean, I knew it could happen in theory. But it might actually happen in practice. Not the federal government, of course. A provincial one, though: the Social Credit-turned-Reform-turned-”Liberal” Party that currently holds a majority in British Columbia under one Christy Clark. Later Sunday she will be hauled onto the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Reason No. 217 Why an Ambassador for Religious Freedom is a Silly Idea
I just about fell off my chair when the Globe & Mail’s Tuesday editorial actually suggested that a suitable first task for newly minted Religious Freedom Ambassador Bennett would be an inspection tour of Tibet: Sending the freshly minted ambassador would surely anger China, a major Canadian trading partner. But
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: CBC Science News: Humans Only a Few Thousand Years Old
Maybe it’s just a typo, but it’s a little depressing to see the state broadcaster’s science reporters — people whose salaries I pay — utter statements like the following: if you went back thousands of years and “replayed the tape of life,” would you end up with humans and the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Ethics Aren’t Dead. They’re Just Hiding.
An editorial from a small local newspaper out west was sent to me by a reader this week. The paper in question is the Prince George Citizen: To our shock and dismay, multiple incidents of plagiarism were uncovered from work over the last number of months. The staff member plagiarized
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: No One Actually Believes in Freedom of Religion
I have to say, the childish credulity of the professionally faithful is kind of amazing. We all knew that the Harper government was creating the Religious Freedoms Office because his religious base would love it. I don’t think until this week that I realized how truly silly they are, how
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: New Media Spin: Right-wing Tax Increases Good. NDP Tax Increases Very, Very Bad.
Here’s a puzzle for my readers: try and guess which one of the following two editorials, each of them discussing a slight bump in the tax rate for the wealthiest individuals, comes from the Globe & Mail, and which one comes from the local leftist rag: An extra two per
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: What is the Government Doing to the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s Report on Military Procurement?
Like many of my readers, I am old enough to remember the beginning of January 2013, when the press was all abuzz over reports that Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page had completed what promised to be an incendiary sequel to his takedown of the F-35 project, this one involving the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: The Stupidity of Rex Murphy and the Impending Extinction of Humanity
Today’s column comes to you courtesy of Rex Murphy. When I was growing up, I remember listening to Rex on the radio and liking him. Later, he turned to newspaper columns, and I think it was only then that I realized what a dunce he was. And is. After poking
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Harper Minister Tries to Influence Court Decisions, Resigns Instead
Events of the past week have demonstrated what the limits of responsibility are in the Harper government. Violating the ministerial code of conduct is fine — Jim Flaherty’s letter to the CRTC, for instance. Expensing a $16 glass of orange juice — okay, too. Bilking tens of thousands of dollars
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Benedict XVI Was Not a Good Pope
So, the pope is retiring. Even in Canada, which is hardly a Catholic country, this apparently ranks right up there with the fact that Harper’s select senators are pilfering the public purse. Which is a story I’ll return to tomorrow. But today the press and, more importantly, the government media
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Mike Duffy’s Supposed New Reason for Residence Fraud: Healthcare Freeloading
Jane Taber of the Globe & Mail has acquired from an anonymous sourcea new explanation for why Senator Mike Duffy has an Ontario health card and doesn’t pay resident taxes in PEI, even though he claims that his primary residence is in Cavendish and he is compensated to the tune
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: New Conservative Excuse for Expenses Fraud: Law is Too Complex to Read
I’m not sure there’s a more delicious irony than the fact that the Conservative Senator now being publicly alleged to have defrauded the public of tens of thousands of dollars in wrongfully claimed living expenses, on the dubious grounds that his vacation cottage in PEI is his “primary residence” and
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: New Conservative Robocall Deception Laying Pretext for Gerrymandering?
In case you haven’t heard yet, the Conservatives have apparently decided to double down on their shadowy robocall schemes by putting out an allegedly bogus push-poll telling Saskatchewan residents that the new riding boundaries being drawn in that province are going to screw good Saskatchewan residents out of their democratic
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: A Specious “Compromise” for Future of Parliamentary Budget Office
In a way it’s a sign of how sick our democracy is, and how pliant our national media has grown, that the future of the Parliamentary Budget Office (and especially its soon-to-retire manager, Kevin Page) is more in doubt than the future of the government whose routine accounting mismanagement he
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Why I Want to “Reopen the Abortion Debate”: Sixth Estate Responds to Critics
Since I’ve received several complaints via email and ended up tussling in the comments section with none other than one of Canada’s foremost feminist bloggers, I thought it might be useful to respond in detail to the complaints from a number of people who’ve suggested that Friday’s rant saying it
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: It’s Time to “Reopen” the Abortion Debate
The recent request by several Conservative MPs, tireless anti-abortion crusader Maurice Vellacott among them, that the RCMP open murder investigations against physicians who have performed late-term abortions because the mother’s life was at stake has resulted in a predictable body of responses from across Canada. First, the leader of the
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: Conservatives Launch New Assault on Abortion Rights
The Conservative Party has opened a phenomenal new front in its proxy war against abortion. The new argument isn’t that we should revisit the meaning of life under the Criminal Code, or that we should ban sex-selective abortions. They’ve apparently given up on those fights in favour of a worse
Continue readingThe Sixth Estate: When Should Material From Another Source Be Quoted?
A flurry of emails and heartfelt apologies later, I feel pressed to add some additional commentary on a piece I published on Wednesday, which suggested that the Globe & Mail was recycling material from its sources on the topic of income inequality. The original version of the piece could be
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