Further to the report from officers of Parliament demanding more oversight from the House of Commons, experts in the
field agree that this proves more needs to be done. But Donald Savoie
wonders if perhaps we don’t have too many watchdogs already who are accountable
to no one. Of course, that’s what has tended to happen – MPs give up their
oversight powers (reading the estimates is hard,
after all), let these officers of Parliament do the hard work – generally after
the money has been spent – and then MPs get to use the reports of those
officers to score political points. It’s a broken model that we need to step
away from if MPs are to have any relevance other than as robotic voting machines
and deliverers of talking points going forward.
What’s that? The government is in no hurry to look at an independent oversight body for the RCMP, despite the trouble
the Force has had in recent (and not so recent) years? You don’t say!
David Akin looks at the different paths to
victory that NDP leadership contenders can take, given the preferential ballot
system the party is employing.
Althia Raj previews the vacancies in the
Senate and says that it looks like Betty Unger will get the nod for the vacant
Alberta seat based on the results of the sham “consultative election” that
happened way back in 2004.
The governor general was in Prague to attend the funeral of Vaclav Havel, that country’s first democratically elected
president and former dissident playwright. In this video interview with The Globe and Mail, His Excellency David
Johnston talks about the need for better civic education and the relevance of
the Crown.
Jane Taber looks at how Harper is reshaping the way the country is governed, as in he’s not interested in sitting around
the table with the premiers to negotiate things, but rather is more keen to do
things the way he did on Monday with the health funding “accord.”
And PostMedia talks to Ruth Ellen Brosseau
about how much her life has changed over the past year.
Why you can trust Xtra
