Posted by Scott Tribe on April 13, 2012, at 6:24 pm |
Think this decision ruffled a few feathers in the Conservative government today?
The Supreme Court of Canada struck down Friday warrantless wiretap powers that police have in cases of emergency. The high court has given Parliament a year to re-write the law. Ruling in a 2006 British Columbia kidnapping case, the country’s top court said a 1993 provision of the Criminal Code is unconstitutional because there is no accountability or oversight for the warrantless searches, either to the person wiretapped or in reports to Parliament.
The unanimous ruling was written by rookie judges Michael Moldaver and Andromache Karakatsanis.
A unanimous ruling – that includes the new Supreme Court judges Harper appointed to the bench.
If this law doesn’t meet muster, how is the warrantless wiretapping provision in Bill-C30 – the on-line surveillance proposed legislation – going to pass muster?
You know now why Harper and the Conservatives don’t wish to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
You also know why Harper and company hate judges – even ones they appoint believe in following the rule of law.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 11, 2012, at 7:13 am |
Hard-right conservatives will not like the findings of this poll:
Fully 64 per cent, including a majority of Conservatives and wealthy people, say they are willing to shell out a bit more in taxes to protect social programs such as health care, pensions and access to higher education, all of which help reduce income inequality. Less surprisingly, there’s even more support — 83 per cent — for raising taxes on the wealthiest. These findings by Environics Research for the newly created, progressive Broadbent Institute confirm that the public is genuinely concerned about the growing rich/poor gap.
Some may say: well, the poll is sponsored by the Broadbent Institute; the left’s counterpart to the Manning Institute, so what do you expect? That is true, but it’s also true that Environics is a respected independent polling firm – who isn’t in the business of skewing polling results. It should not be seen as a complete surprise – these findings – as Canadians are generally very happy with their social programs, particularly when they see what their counterparts in the US have – or don’t have as the case may be. This poll merely validates that.
Don’t expect the Conservative government to act on this of course, but the next non-Conservative government should take heart; if you put tax increases towards things that benefit all Canadians, they’ll be willing to absorb it.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 10, 2012, at 6:55 am |
Apparently, a 10 billion $ discrepancy in what the F-35 was estimated to cost is now trying to be sold as no big deal – just a minor thing, according to Defense Minister MacKay:
Defence Minister Peter MacKay admits he knew that buying F-35 fighters could cost $25 billion — billions of dollars more than Ottawa publicly acknowledged — but insists there was never any effort to mislead Canadians. After days of fierce criticism that defence department officials intentionally kept Parliament in the dark about the cost of the F-35s, MacKay went on the offensive Sunday, insisting that a $10 billion gap in the fighter budget was an accounting difference.
Is Finance Minister Flaherty the one who told Pete to try out this line of defense? That sounds like something he might say. Regardless, if the government knew 2 years ago the plane might not cost that much, why not bother mentioning that in the election campaign of 2011? Why attack the Parliamentary Budget Officer – who correctly estimated the correct cost – as being unrealistic?
There’s a rather obvious answer to that: they didn’t want Canadians to know the real cost of this plane – what’s turning into the Ford Edsel of fighter jets.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 9, 2012, at 7:24 am |
I see some places are re-broadcasting a site and the site researcher who claims he has been able to identify who Pierre Poutine is – the famous handle in the Robocon vote suppression scandal.
All I’ll say at this point is, I know the site has published some reasoning as why they think he know who it is, but I’ll wait until the party in question admits it, before I jump on the bandwagon – legal issues and all, you know.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 5, 2012, at 7:10 am |
A lot of ink and writing has been spilled elsewhere over this scandal – one where the Conservative government of Canada and its Cabinet Ministers, and it’s Prime Minister has been found severely wanting by the Auditor-General on the true costs of the planes, the deliberate attempt to prevent multiple tenders, etc. The way the government presented these figures to the public is also under attack. Opposition to this project a year or 2 ago was branded just short of treason, and the government refused to provide true costing to the Parliament.
Indeed, this refusal was the primary reason the Conservatives fell on a non-confidence motion and found to be in contempt of Parliament. Unfortunately, that didn’t hurt the Conservatives. They went on and won a majority government anyhow. Not enough of the public (in our particular voting setup) cared enough about this or thought it was true – hence the result.
The opponents of the F-35 process and such have been proved right – about a year too late. One can only hope that enough of the public wakes up and realizes Harper fleeced them, and remembers that when the next election rolls around.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 3, 2012, at 7:17 am |
As some know, I’m not one who normally goes out of my way to go after the NDP on a lot of things, as they have positions closer to me then the Conservatives do by a longshot, but if this is Thomas Mulcair’s new strategy, it doesn’t exactly bode well for opposition party cooperation or opposition party supporter’s wooing:
..the New Democrats have still not let the Liberals respond to last week’s budget in the House of Commons and are going against tradition to use all of the response time themselves. When asked about the strategy after Question Period, Opposition Leader Thomas Mulcair said the NDP plans to use every opportunity the parliamentary rule book presented to demonstrate what is wrong with the budget.
On the one hand, it could be argued no one outside of party faithful and press gallery members care who says what in the opposition’s response to the Budget – particularly when it’s stretched over four days. On the other hand, it is antics like this that get your left-of-center Liberals (including me) who normally would be sympathetic to some NDP positions and willing to give them an ear on some of this rather ticked off; not exactly a way to woo those voters, if this is the tactics you’re using. Nathan Cullen and his view of cooperation appears to have been given short shrift here in the Mulcair led party.
If the NDP can point to example of when they were the 3rd party (or lower), where the Official Opposition, be they the Liberals, or the Conservatives, or the Alliance, or the Reform Party, or even the BQ, did the same kind of stunt that they can point to for precedence on this – that this isn’t breaking all traditions, as the reporter said – then feel free to point it out.
Posted by Scott Tribe on April 2, 2012, at 6:03 pm |
Liberal MP Roger Cuzner – with a lot of smiling Liberal MP’s around him:
It might be accurate to say this has been the single biggest boost of Liberal morale since… oh.. 2004? I’m not exactly sure if that’s a good thing. I’ve also heard some facetiously say that this even has guaranteed Justin would win the Liberal Party of Canada leadership if he changed his mind and decided to put his name forward.
Posted by Scott Tribe on March 30, 2012, at 5:20 pm |
This is a day ago, but I thought it worthwhile to post for those who didn’t see it in it’s entirety. The new NDP and Official Opposition Leader is being interviewed by Evan Solomon on his reaction to the Conservative 2012 Budget. I thought it was a pretty impressive performance. If he can translate that over to his stump speeches, he will be a formidable foe for both Harper and the new permanent Liberal leader.
Good soundbite quotes too – Evan really likes the one at the end over the penny.
Posted by Scott Tribe on March 29, 2012, at 7:22 am |
Briefly this morning: I’d like to give some props to the newly redesigned Liblogs , which is an aggregator for Liberal blogs and/or Liberally-inclined blogs. You have 2 new administrators over there – Steve V of Far and Wide and Nancy from Impolitical, along with David Graham, a former Liblogs blogger, who is still involved with the site.
The site changes look good. Best of luck to everyone.
Posted by Scott Tribe on March 28, 2012, at 7:18 am |
This action by the Conservatives is about as likely it being coincidental as the chances of me voting Conservative are:
Canada’s chief electoral officer is being called before MPs to speak about the robo-calls controversy dogging the Harper government on the same day Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivers his budget. The Conservative-controlled procedure and House affairs committee has asked Marc Mayrand to appear March 29, just a few hours before Mr. Flaherty tables the 2012-13 federal budget.
Most of the media in Ottawa that day will be sequestered in a lockup digesting the financial plan. They will be unable to leave the budget proceedings until Mr. Flaherty tables the document at 4 pm ET.
Really Conservatives.. try not to make this so darn obvious.
