You know, I’m starting to feel sorry for Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro. I’m sure he wants to do good, but he just keeps being foiled by those around him. I mean, it is so hard to find good help these days, isn’t it? Take these allegations of campaign overspending
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Evening Links
Assorted content to end your day. – Thomas Walkom highlights why we should be nothing but dubious about the austerians’ call to slash public supports: The Harper Conservatives are scaling back spending on national parks to save about $20 million. But at the same time they are planning to spend
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – The OECD is the latest independent observer to confirm Thomas Mulcair’s point that dutch disease is a real problem for Canadian manufacturing. And Marc Lee calls for a green industrial revolution as a better path toward economic development and environmental responsibility than
Continue readingCANADIAN PROGRESSIVE WORLD: Harper v. Canada: Understanding Stephen Harper’s War Against Canada
Welcome to Harper v. Canada, a new column that digs deep to understand Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s current war against our democratic institutions, freedoms and dissent. The column uses two approaches to unravel Harper’s phony commitment to making Canada “the best country in the world: a) exhaustive excavation of Harper’s
Continue readingImpolitical: Del Mastro under investigation
Terry Milewski has a good overview of the deets on yesterday’s big news of allegations of Dean Del Mastro having overspent in the 2008 federal election. The report came from Postmedia who have been all over the robocall scandal like gangbusters and they have now uncovered these Del Mastro allegations
Continue readingImpolitical: On keeping elections out of court
Now that Conservative Ted Opitz has launched his appeal of the nullification of the Etobicoke-Centre election result, it looks like a bit of a public relations effort has started by Conservative friendlies to raise doubt about the judgment. See Tom Flanagan in the Globe today fixating on the 79 votes
Continue readingImpolitical: Conservatives appeal in Etobicoke-Centre
“Tory in overturned Toronto election to go to Supreme Court.” Under the Canada Elections Act, the Supreme Court is required to hear an appeal of a contested election result “without delay and in a summary manner.” Andres Garin, the court’s executive legal officer, couldn’t give firm details of how the
Continue readingImpolitical: Judge overturns Etobicoke-Centre election result
“I declare the election null and void as contemplated under s.531(2) of the Canada Elections Act.” (para. 154) The overturned result is making the rounds all over, reported here at CBC & Canadian Press. Described as “rare” and “groundbreaking.” In other words, it suits the times considering the new, highly
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Parliament in Review – April 2, 2012
Monday, April 2 saw the second day of Peter Julian’s extended budget speech. And perhaps the point most worth noting is how many Canadians outside of Parliament took the opportunity have their voices heard in the budget debate. The Big Issue So let’s focus this review on some of the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Paul Krugman writes a long-overdue obituary for the confidence fairy who was supposed to turn needless austerity into growth contrary to all economic evidence: So, about that doctrine: appeals to the wonders of confidence are something Herbert Hoover would have found completely familiar
Continue readingPolitics Canada: Missing Conservative robocall records no surprise
We have another case of electoral fraud where the trail of evidence has led directly to the Conservative Party of Canada’s headquarters. We now learn that Elections Canada has discovered that several key records are missing, records which would have helped them to identify “Pierre Poutine“. Does this come as
Continue readingCanadian Progressive World: Elections Canada keeps rulings secret on 2,982 complaints since 1997
Federal politicians continue to fail to require disclosure of key information to ensure the Canada Elections Act is enforced fairly and effectively OTTAWA, April 16, 2012 – Today, Democracy Watch released its analysis of Elections Canada’s enforcement of the Canada Elections … Continue reading →
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Alison nicely debunks the Cons’ latest Robocon talking points. Paula Boutis offers her own suggestions to strengthen Elections Canada in investigating vote suppression. And Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher report that the Cons have been working on funneling federal money through a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Susan Delacourt notes that while the NDP’s leadership convention points out some of the risks of online voting, the real problem lies in the people working to block democracy through any available means: While those who use computers have become accustomed to the
Continue readingPop The Stack: Conservative Budget Shows Us What is Important to Them
A common response from many pundits on the recent Conservative budget seems to be: sensible, dull, uncontroversial. David Frum recently published his analysis and went a bit further asking whether or not this budget definitively proves that Canada is the “best-governed country in the advanced democratic world”. He thinks it does. His question is especially
Continue readingPop The Stack: Conservative Budget Shows Us What is Important to Them
A common response from many pundits on the recent Conservative budget seems to be: sensible, dull, uncontroversial. David Frum recently published his analysis and went a bit further asking whether or not this budget definitively proves that Canada is the “best-governed country in the advanced democratic world”. He thinks it does. His question is especially
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your weekend. – Karl Nerenberg reported on Marc Mayrand’s Robocon testimony, featuring some much-needed discussion of what can be done to improve the Canada Elections Act to ensure fair elections rather than creating an incentive for electoral fraud: Mayrand fretted to the Committee that there are
Continue readingImpolitical: Chart of the week
Click to enlarge. (Source) Elections Canada was largely singled out for budgetary savings, among all the Agents of Parliament in the Harper/Flaherty budget. When it is in the midst of a 200 riding-wide investigation across the country to determine what happened with harassing and misleading phone calls that may have
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Yes, there was huge news in Robocon yesterday, with Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand rightly declaring the Cons’ fraudulent vote suppression to be “absolutely outrageous” while sharing the news that reports of wrongdoing have now come in from two-thirds of all of Canada’s
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Robocon: Lest we forget – The Elections Canada CEO report to Parliament
KadyO’Malley did the country a service by refusing to be sidetracked by Harper’sscheduling of the interim reportto the House by ChiefElectoral Officer Marc Mayrand for the same day as thebudget. It turns out that there were lots of journalists inattendance – so it is clear that at least some
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