Because we are a country that, apparently, believes in informing on one’s neighbours, the government took the rather unprecedented move of posting the names and photos of 30 “suspected war criminals” who may have entered the country illegally. Apparently, this would allow people to turn them in. It is galling that most of these people have not been convicted or given due process and that the government is asking people to turn them in. This is a worrying trend.
The Toronto Star profiles the first few weeks of one of the new 20-year-old NDP MPs. Amidst all of the “mentoring” tips and tricks she’s been exposed to, I see absolutely nothing about learning what her actual job as an MP is – you know, holding the government to account and learning about the supply cycle to use it as a means of accountability. She likes to giggle and is totally planning to spend her summer in her new riding to learn more about it.
There are reports that the government is considering privatizing some (or perhaps all) search-and-rescue functions currently done by the Air Force. Granted, most of the Air Force is going to fight this tooth and nail, but it’s the latest chapter in the long saga of delaying the procurement of the needed search-and-rescue replacement aircraft.
At a federal government announcement on affordable housing in Calgary, Conservative MP Rob Anders declared his support for provincial Conservative leadership candidate Ted Morton ten times in a three-and-a-half minute speech. To say that an MP doing this while making an announcement on behalf of a minister is wildly inappropriate is a bit of an understatement. The way Anders did it was just bizarre. And this is the MP that the main party keeps defending from nomination challenges in his own riding in increasingly underhanded ways.
The governments of Canada and Ontario have sold their remaining Chrysler stock – at a profit, one assumes.
Remember hearing about the Davie Shipyards in Quebec during question period over the past several months? The company has found a way out of creditor protection and its ready to bid on those shipbuilding contracts, which the government delayed for a couple of weeks so that this could indeed happen.
The government has announced that a new, expanded oilsands monitoring process is in the planning stages. So, after we balance the budget, will we see it? Maybe, along with the other promises.
And Kady O’Malley compares committee procedures in the British Commons to the Canadian Commons, given the attention paid to said committees in the past week with the whole News of the World hacking inquiry. She finds that the UK committees behave more like Canadian Senate committees and are more productive and less partisan as a result. Perhaps our MPs should be looking to the other place for some advice on how to make their committees function a bit better.
Why you can trust Xtra
