The Ethics Commissioner has ruled that Helena Guergis did indeed contravene ethics guidelines when she promoted a company that her husband was connected to in a letter to her local council. But might I just add that the NDP have no room to complain about the (slow, and obfuscation-heavy) job that the Ethics Commissioner is doing in cases like these and others that she dismisses after interpreting the rules very narrowly, seeing as they gleefully went along with the changes governing her office during their rush to pass the “Federal Accountability Act” five years ago in order to try and stick the knife into the Liberals. They are in fact reaping what they sowed.
Wondering why the US has a debt ceiling and Canada doesn’t? It turns out we did until 2007, when the Conservatives took out the provisions of the Financial Administration Act, and seeing as MPs haven’t exactly been keen on financial oversight duties (as we’ve previously discussed, math is hard and MPs would rather be holding press conferences on private members bills that will never see the light of day), it went unnoticed until it hit the Senate, at which point it was too late. Should I make that point about MPs actually doing their jobs once again?
The government is looking at creating a series of military bases or “transport hubs” in the Arctic to try and cut response times and increase surveillance capacity in the north.
Bob Rae says the crumbling Champlain Bridge (*drink!*) is fast becoming an international issue, as it’s a major transport artery to the United States.
Aaron Wherry takes us back to the very first televised Question Period from 1977, where desk thumping rather than clapping and standing ovations were the order of the day, and the camera operators actually gave reaction shots – something that our coverage today could use more of.
Roland Paris wonders just what Stephen Harper is so afraid of that he insists on fear mongering about what a dangerous place the world is and how Canada is continually under threat.
And here’s an interesting piece about the former head of CSIS, Jim Judd, testifying about how CSIS was trying to insulate itself should the intelligence it received from foreign sources be obtained through torture (making it inadmissible), and how that impacted not only our relations with foreign agencies, but also several security certificate cases in Canada.