Competence failure

Dear Liberals: I know your shtick lately
has been that you’re the most credible and competent opposition in the House of Commons, but
this morning, well, you blew it. I’m sorry, but a letter to the governor general, asking him to withhold royal assent on the Wheat Board bill until the
court challenges have been settled? What were you thinking, trying to provoke a
constitutional crisis, the likes of which we haven’t seen since 1707? Despite the history of Canadian governors general not overturning the decisions of
responsible government no matter the populist sentiment? Or the fact that His

Excellency David Johnston has already said he’s not going to wade into the
Wheat Board issue? If you thought this was just going to be a show for the
media to keep the Wheat Board issue in the media cycle, well, this blew up in
your faces and made you look like fools. This is a tactic more befitting the
New Democrats, with their general disdain for the Westminster system of government, and
not the Parliamentarian of the Year who knows better.

The chief of Attawapiskat is considering court action over the government’s handling of the situation in her community,
while the Quebec government is considering suing the federal government over
the long-gun registry records. Not that this government has made a habit of
adhering to the rule of law when court decisions come down.

Peter Kent announced that Canada is withdrawing from the Kyoto Accord and blames an “incompetent Liberal
government” for getting us into it in the first place. He then gave a bunch of
bogus numbers for how much it would have cost us to stay in. But for his charge
of “incompetence,” Kent should probably heed the advice that people not
throw stones while in glass houses.

In a bid to change the channel and distract
the populace from things like Attawapiskat, Kyoto or the various ways in which
the government has been abusing Parliament, what do the Conservatives do? They
get Jason Kenney to issue a ministerial decree to ban women from wearing face
veils during citizenship ceremonies, while justifying said ministerial decree
as somehow protecting the values of a liberal democracy. Yeah. That wasn’t a

transparent bid to appease the base and stir passions on the other side at all.

Here is more about whether we’ll actually have 65 F-35 fighter jets once our purchase is complete (remembering, as well,
that 65 was going to be a low number that would mean we’d have pretty
much no spares in the event of accidents or losses).

The lobbying commissioner has found that
former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer and his business partner did break lobbying
rules – and yet she has no power to enforce them, and the RCMP has opted not
to proceed with charges.

Here’s a great piece in this week’s Hill Times about the increasingly restricted access to cabinet ministers that members of the Hill media are facing.

Kady O’Malley schools us on closure, time allocation and “the question being put” – and the conflation of
them that is playing out in the Commons right now.

And because we apparently have nothing
better to worry about, you might be shocked – shocked! – to learn that the Harpers may have used a photo from the
same shoot two years in a row on their holiday cards. The horror! The horror!