The beleaguered leader of the opposition’s trouble with the English language has been no end of comic relief for his opponents and frustration to his party.
I’ve been told during one of Stéphane Dion’s recent speeches, one of his MPs professed a desire to take French lessons so he could understand his leader when he spoke French. His fellow MPs then had to inform the bloke that might be a good idea but that Dion was in fact speaking English at the time.
Today, we find that apparently the transcribers of the national press gallery are equally flummoxed by Dion’s creativity with the English language. During a scrum this afternoon, when asked whether he supported renovations at 24 Sussex Drive to help make the Prime Minister’s residence more energy efficient Dion responded, “Thank you. I like the question.”
But to read the transcript of the scrum provided to reporters by the press gallery it would appear as if the leader of the opposition was more affected by his party’s current fortunes than he has let on.
“Thank you,” reads the transcript. “I like depression.”
A decade ago, Canadian athletes became the envy of the Olympic village with their Roots-produced team uniforms. So much so that in more recent Olympics the U.S. also went to the Canadian company to get its uniforms, including the U.S. hosted games in Salt Lake City in 2002.
I don’t remember if there was an outcry in the U.S. about the outsourcing though I’m sure some were upset.
But this weekend we learn that HBC, which is the official Olympic clothing sponsor now, is having the uniforms made in China. Now aside from the bizarreness of the fact the clothes are made in China, shipped to Canada, and then taken back there for the Olympics, there is now a concern of course that perhaps we should be capturing some Olympic team pride with some Made in Canada clothing on their backs.
But when called out by opposition MPs for this little revelation, the government claims it isn’t happy with the plan but can’t do anything about it.
“The Canadian Olympic Committee is an independent body that operates at arm’s length from the government,” said Blair MacLean, Helena Guergis’ communications director. Guergis is the secretary of state of amateur sport.
So let me get this straight. The government will tell Canada’s nuclear safety watchdog what to do, even though a screw-up with nuclear anything is a major disaster of epic proportions. They’ll tell the Canadian Wheat Board it can’t promote its monopoly and order it to change its policies.
But to tell the Olympic committee not to buy t-shirts and baseball hats from China is interfering?
I’ve never been a fan of the GST cut. I’ll put that on the table. To me there are far more effective ways to cut taxes.
But there is also a fallacy in this little GST cut. Many people may not remember that in 2004 Stephen Harper promised to stop charging the GST on gas prices when they went over 85 cents a litre. At the time he said that was just a windfall for the government that it wasn’t expecting and didn’t need.
Fast forward four years, and here is the same Stephen Harper, now prime minister, and he has instead cut the GST by two percentage points.
But has anyone pointed out to Harper that gas prices at 1.25 cents a litre at the pump mean that even at 5 per cent, his government is collecting more GST from Canadians at the gas pumps than he was when the GST was 7 per cent and gas prices were under $1 a litre?
I’m just saying.
Ah. The Ottawa bubble. That invisible dome around our nation’s capital that makes the people who live and work for the federal government forget that there is life outside the Hill.
And the executive vice-president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada is a case in point. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest Ed Cashman owes the people of Manitoba and Vic Toews an apology.
Cashman is complaining that when Toews took over the Treasury Board portfolio from John Baird the collective bargaining negotiations with PSAC were stalled by nine months.
If that is the case Cashman can complain all he wants. What got my blood boiling is that Cashman blames it on the fact Toews is from Manitoba.
In this week’s Hill Times, Cashman is quoted as saying the following:
“John Baird [Ottawa West-Nepean, Ont.], as you know, is an Ottawa-area Member of Parliament. He understands the importance of the public service to this region … [and] to the fortunes of the Conservative Party. Mr. Toews [Provencher, Man.] is from Manitoba. He doesn’t appear to understand the importance of the public service to Canadians, let alone people in Ottawa, so there has been a major disconnect there and it’s taken a lot of time to get Mr. Toews up to speed. That’s been a terrible, terrible frustration.”
Are you kidding me? He may as well have suggested Toews is an illiterate country bumpkin because apparently if you’re not from Ottawa you’re an idiot who can’t understand how to negotiate with the public sector unions.
Does he even know there are thousands of PSAC employees in Manitoba? Or that Toews used to be one himself?
Betcha he thinks Manitobans also shouldn’t be trusted to vote.
John Baird, as the environment minister has to be seen as at least somewhat green. So his chauffeur-driven mini-van runs on 85 per cent ethanol.
But he might want to send a memo (by e-mail of course) to his department to remind them that killing trees is generally not something the office of the environment minister should promote.
At Friday’s press conference on polar bears – where he announced only that in August he is going to announce something to protect the cute and cuddly looking beasts – his staff handed out two documents. One was a news release, the other a backgrounder. Both were two pages. And both on the second page had exactly one line of text.
Creativity with spacing or some quick editing could have easily made both just one sheet, cutting back on paper
Sometimes, it’s the little things that make a big difference.
Okay, please forgive me.
I was wrong.
And my memory apparently needs a tune-up. I once followed every titillating detail of George Radwanski’s lavish expense account spending. But this week when writing about proactive disclosure on this very blog I completely forgot that former privacy commissioner with champagne taste on a taxpayer’s dime was the reason we now get to see every nickel cabinet ministers and bureaucrats spend on dinners and travel.
And that happened before the Tories took over.
(And just to ensure I don’t take credit for the title of this entry, that was one of the suggestions for my blog name given by a friend a few months back. But since I didn’t intend to only apologize for my errors in this blog I couldn’t use it. I’m still in search of a good title though. . .)
Ask the people who work at the Chicken Chef in Steinbach.
Vic Toews spent $33.50 for a working lunch with three people at the fast food franchise Dec. 20, 2007.
You know there is a reason why paparazzi pay off hotel staff and restaurant workers. They have all the inside info.
Toews’ expense reports for the last year – which have to be posted online now, just like the expenses of all federal ministers’ and their staff members - also show he has a penchant for Italian food.
His favourite haunt in Winnipeg is Pasta La Vista and in Ottawa it is Carmello’s Italian restaurant.
He visited both multiple times since April 2006.
This proactive disclosure process instituted by Toews’ government is a good thing. It allows people to keep track of what money is being spent on wining and dining and traveling by their elected officials.
But it still doesn’t quite go far enough. Because nowhere on the proactive disclosure lists does it say who Toews took for lunch at the Chicken Chef. Or who his date was at Hy’s Steakhouse in Winnipeg last July for $128.80.
Privacy rules mean the people he is taking out for lunch and dinner don’t have to be named. But if you’re eating on the taxpayer’s dime, your name should be there so it can be scrutinized that the meeting was actually legitimate.
And for my own proactive disclosure, I’m pretty sure I was Vic’s luncheon date for a working lunch at Pasta la Vista on Sept. 11, 2007 for $38.51. If I remember right I had soup and a salad and he picked up the cheque before I could grab it. I gotta get faster reflexes.
Wow. What a shocker. A coroner’s jury in England says Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed were killed because they were in a car driven by a drunk driver pursued recklessly by paparazzi and neither Diana nor Dodi were buckled up.
Um.
Is it just me or did we kind of know that 10.5 years ago when they died?
British taxpayers are on the hook for the equivalent of $20.1 million CDN to hear sordid and baseless accusations of conspiracies and cover-ups only to end up with a verdict any sane person who was alive and kicking in August 1997 could have given you for free.
If I were a British taxpayer I’d be seething right now.
What’s scarier to me is that nothing has changed with the paparazzi since 1997. In fact, the intensity with which they pursue their intended targets has heightened. So two people are dead, Brits are out $20.1 million, and we’ve apparently learned absolutely nothing as a society.
That’s. Just. Great.
Tory MP Tom Lukiwski’s homophobic rant on a video tape uncovered by the Saskatchewan NDP was THE story on the hill today.
Aside from whether or not something he said 17 years ago is going to hurt his career in the long run, there are three very important questions here.
1. Why would anyone video tape that?
2. Why would anyone keep said video tape?
3. Why wouldn’t said keepers of the tape remove it when they moved offices?
It is not the first time political parties have found evidence of their opponents misdeeds by stumbling across evidence left behind in the whole government switch-a-roo exercise. It happened in the federal government after Harper took over from the Liberals.
And a long time after the Filmon government was ousted, the NDP found a document in a desk once used by a senior Tory spin doctor which showed the Tories strategizing on how best to use government dollars to advertise in their party’s favour prior to the 1999 election.
The documents were not as juicy as the Lukiwski tape. But they suggested a hypocrisy note in the Tories, who have been highly critical of the NDP for using tax dollars for government advertising campaigns which really are more political in nature than they should be.
I wonder how quickly spring cleaning is taking place in government offices across this country right now, as anxious political staffers hope to stumble on this kind of gold mine. At the very least, maybe it will shake the dust off all those government reports we paid for.
One of the biggest issues on the Hill this week is the flag flap.
A federal panel has recommended the flag on the Peace Tower only be lowered to half-mast for specific circumstances - Remembrance Day, when a Prime Minister dies, etc. Lowering it too often would reduce the symbolism of the flag, said Tory MP Jason Kenney.
But lowering it every time a soldier dies representing Canada and fighting under that flag overseas? Nope. Kenney said if that had been done during world war II the flag never would have been at full mast.
Do I need to point out that if soldiers in Afghanistan were dying as frequently as they did during World War II there is no way in heck we would still be engaged over there? Canadians were ready to pull out when we had one or two dying a month.
The Liberals meanwhile are putting forward a motion that will likely pass today that would see the flag lowered for every soldier. It used to happen that way until 2006, when the Conservatives took over government, and started the U.S. practice of trying to keep every soldier’s death to the least publicity possibility.
So what do people think? Should the flag be lowered every time? Does a soldier fighting overseas have the same value to his or her life - and death - as a prime minister or a supreme court justice?
How do we honour fallen soldiers without making a mockery of the situation?
