The Commons: Those angry days of yore

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 1, 2009 at 6:15 PM - 11 Comments

The Scene. David McGuinty rose first with a reminder of days gone by.

It was 18 months ago, he mused. The Chalk River nuclear facility was inactive. A shortage of medical isotopes threatened. Thousands of patients across Canada and around the world hung in the balance. The Prime Minister, Mr. McGuinty recalled, quite rightly deemed the precarious situation a “threat to human health.”

The Liberal environment critic though was not giving the Prime Minister full credit. Indeed, to pick just four of Stephen Harper’s words from those heady days of national crisis, is to do a great disservice to the memory of his performance then. Continue…

So, no buyers for Chalk River, huh? – Liveblogging Lisa Raitt on the sale of AECL's reactor building division

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 10 Comments

ITQ heads over to the National Press Theatre to watch Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt makes it official: She’s selling off shares in the AECL division that actually makes money, at least in theory – and with lots and lots of subsidies — and bringing in outside experts to manage the beleaguered Chalk River unit.

11:01:10 AM
Greetings from the hallowed halls of the National Press Building, where I’m one of the first few reporters to arrive on the scene, which gave ITQ a front-row seat to witness the press gallery logistics team in action, first performing the all-important setting-up-of-the-conference call, and then politely, but firmly, ejecting from the press theatre a Liberal MP who wanted to watch the announcement, but didn’t plan on delivering her party’s official reaction from the podium. We have rules, y’all, when it comes to allowing politicians on to our turf, and freerange, open concept scrummage is best done in one of the many other venues better suited for such activities. Honestly, if we gave government and opposition MPs a free pass, it would quickly degenerate into a battle over which side could fill the most seats, with the working press eventually relegated to the hallway outside.

Apparently, opposition MPs were also barred from the technical meeting earlier this morning, which, according to our MP, constitutes a “travesty”. Such is the price one pays for open and accountable government, I guess.

Anyway, the room is starting to fill up with legitimate press conference attendees — one of whom, of course, whistling the theme from The Simpsons — and the press kits are being handed. The government, you will be pleased if not entirely surprised to learn, is about to “move forward” on the restructuring of AECL, although the words “privatize”, “sale” or “open to bidders” appear nowhere in the two page release.

11:14:47 AM
Thirty second warning. Places, everybody!

11:16:46 AM
And – here’s the minister! Oh, and we *will* get the Liberal — and NDP — reaction after all, from David McGuinty and Nathan Cullen, respectively. First, though, a few words from Lisa Raitt.

Continue…

Chalk River redux

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 22, 2009 at 1:14 PM - 20 Comments

Stephen Harper on Linda Keen, Dec. 11, 2007. “What we do know is the continuing actions of the Liberal appointed Nuclear Safety Commission will jeopardize the health and safety and lives of tens of thousands of Canadians. We do not have the authority to act as an executive, but we do have the responsibility to demand that Parliament step in and fix this situation before the health of more people is put in jeopardy.”

Gary Lunn on Linda Keen, Jan. 16, 2008. “In particular her lack of leadership during the extended shutdown of the NRU reactor at Chalk River, does not meet the very high standard of conduct the government and Canadians expect from public office holders who are responsible for the executive management of institutions charged with safeguarding the health and safety of all Canadians.”

Tony Clement on Linda Keen, Jan. 29, 2008. “I can tell you that I agree with the decision. I think it’s the right decision. I think it protects Canadians in the future. It’s not a decision you take lightly. You don’t fire heads of commissions every day of the week or every month in the year, but when it is for the health and safety of Canadians, you have to make those kinds of difficult decisions at times.”

So who gets fired now?

The Commons: Smile and shrug

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 1, 2009 at 1:23 AM - 41 Comments

The Scene. After the last of several government MPs had been sent up before Question Period to cast aspersions on Michael Ignatieff’s character, the Speaker decided to interject. Calling for order, Peter Milliken told Conservative Daryl Kramp that he might “find himself suspended” if tries again to defy a recent ruling against the use of Parliament’s time to attack a fellow MP.

Those on the Liberal and NDP benches applauded. The government side pouted and, after Question Period, once more asserted its right to freely disparage by doing just that.

“This is politics. This is not a Harvard classroom,” explained Kory Teneycke, the Prime Minister’s press secretary. “You have to be able to take it as well as give it.”

Above all else, it seems, one’s ability to “take it” is the highest measure of public leadership in Stephen Harper’s Ottawa. Take, for instance, the Question Period that followed the Speaker’s warning. Continue…

Ottawa—a 'shame house' wrapped in a 'ritualistic cocoon'

By selley - Tuesday, May 20, 2008 at 1:57 PM - 0 Comments

LONG WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Dan Gardner on the carbon tax; Don Martin on Judge Toews; Rosie DiManno on Afghanistan, and again, and again; Rex Murphy on Tim Hortons; Greg Weston on Chalk River.

Coulda been the hubris. Mighta been the stupidity.
On the government’s defence un-strategy, Iggy’s growing unpopularity and other Ottawa-related follies.

Scott Taylor, writing in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, recaps the wholesale embarrassment that followed the government’s unveiling of a $30-billion defence strategy—which consisted almost entirely of previously-announced endeavours and exists in written form, if at all, as a top-secret Cabinet document. He suggests “the spin doctors” at the PMO and at National Defence headquarters might be feeling like the guy in the Irish Rovers’ “Wasn’t That a Party,” “wherein the singer tries to recall how he ended up in the back of a police car.”

To believe Michael Ignatieff would “have the edge” over Bob Rae in a race to replace Stéphane Dion is to “mis-read the situation,” John Ivison writes in the National Post. His second-place finish at the 2006 convention was misleading, for starters, since many delegates who supported Dion would have gone to Rae had he made the final two. And Iggy has neglected to mend fences within the party, Liberal MPs helpfully tell Ivison, even as he builds new ones with overly-ostentatious fundraising and a general aloofness. “It may be that [his ambition] has o’er leapt itself and his best chance to be king is already behind him,” he concludes.

Continue…