A floor-crossing afoot?

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:18 AM - 0 Comments

Liberal leader Bob Rae and Denis Coderre are due in the national press theatre in 15 minutes for an announcement and Radio-Canada is reporting that NDP MP Lise St-Denis will be going over to the Liberal side.

Who will advocate for euthanasia?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Neither the government nor the official opposition seem interested in pursuing the recommendations of yesterday’s Royal Society report.

But despite the ambitious proposals, there are no signs Ottawa wants to have a debate. “We have no plans to propose any reforms to this area of the law,” Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said. And the opposition echoed that reluctance: “We don’t want to go down that road,” NDP MP Jack Harris said.

Of the 57 MPs who supported Francine Lalonde’s motion last year, most, owing to the Bloc’s collapse, were defeated this spring. In all, by my count, 10 members who voted for C-384 at second reading remain in the House: Mauril Belanger, Olivia Chow, Denis Coderre, Jean Crowder, Libby Davies, Megan Leslie, John McCallum, Maria Mourani, Massimo Pacetti and Louis Plamondon.

Add another to the enemies list

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 7, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

On Friday, Michel Dorais, a member of the internal audit committee which oversees the Auditor General, resigned in protest. In Question Period, Mr. Dorais’ resignation was raised by Liberal MP Denis Coderre. Afterward, Tony Clement stood with a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. During question period today there was some mention from the Liberal Party of a gentleman by the name of Michel Dorais. Further to this topic of discussion, I would like to inform the House that Michel Dorais donated in 2009 to former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff. I certainly make no allegations of the partisan leanings of the individual; I simply find that the House should be informed of these facts. I table these documents.

This is the beginning of a beautiful friendship

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 35 Comments

Pat Martin says, if no one else takes up the cause, he’ll enter the NDP leadership race as a pro-merger candidate.

“I haven’t spoken to any potential candidates about this. But the one that says it openly that they will explore and promote some form of co-operation with the Liberals will have my enthusiastic support and in the absence of any such candidate I’ll do it myself,” Martin told iPolitics.

The way forward seems clear: a new party jointly led by Pat Martin and Denis Coderre.

Something, something, merger

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 79 Comments

In the presence of reporters, Justin Trudeau says something about the possibility of a Liberal merger with the NDP that might be considered interesting.

“If we’re serious about getting this country on the right track and reflecting the will of the vast majority of Canadians who didn’t vote for Mr. Harper, I think we have to be open to looking at different possibilities,” he said. ”I’m certainly not going to take anything off the table but I’m certainly not convinced that a merger is the right thing or the way to go. I’m open to being convinced, but I’m not there.”

In a separate interview, he says the only people talking about a merger are reporters. The Globe, in turn, cites Denis Coderre to explain its interest.

Meanwhile, in a cryptic Facebook note, former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff makes an observation from Jack Layton’s funeral that could apply to Liberals and New Democrats (or Liberals and Conservatives or Liberals, Conservatives and New Democrats or humanity in general). Continue…

The Commons: 'Where is the minister?'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 6:51 PM - 41 Comments

The Scene. The moment apparently called for an accusatorily extended index finger. But first, a flashback—subjective as it may be—for the sake of those just tuning in to this tale of Bev Oda’s woe.

“Mr. Speaker, yesterday in this House the Prime Minister basically said: ‘I don’t care whether my minister doctored documents. I don’t care whether she misled the House. I don’t care whether she told the truth. I just don’t care,’” Michael Ignatieff reviewed off the top.

“This kind of disrespect for democracy just has to stop,” he continued, now turning to today. “When will the Prime Minister start showing respect for this House, respect for the people who put us here and fire that minister?”

Here is where he wagged that finger, a dramatic gesture rarely employed by the Liberal leader. Alas, it would him get no further.

“Mr. Speaker, I do not accept the premise of that question,” the Prime Minister pleaded. “The minister took a decision. The minister made clear that the decision was contrary to recommendations which she received from unelected officials, but in a democracy it is the elected officials who make decisions on how to spend taxpayers’ money.”

Apparently here the Prime Minister meant to present us with a choice. We could have a democracy in which elected officials make decisions. Or we could have a democracy in which elected officials were expected to tell the truth and refrain from doctoring documents. But we could not have it both ways. Continue…

The Commons: Repeat after Rona

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 25, 2010 at 6:35 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. To his credit, Christian Paradis did not avoid the House this afternoon. No doubt knowing he would face a new round of questions about the latest in an unfortunate series of circumstances, the former minister of public works and current minister of natural resources took his seat along the front row all the same.

No doubt knowing he would not have to rise to answer a single one of these questions, he surely did so quite comfortably.

“Mr. Speaker, in September 2007, one week before it closed, the request for proposals for renovation of the West Block North Tower was amended and the qualifications needed to bid dramatically downgraded,” Liberal Marcel Proulx said first, reviewing the newest revelation for the benefit of the House. “Experts in the construction industry have said this would have benefited only one bidder, LM Sauvé.”

Nearly every other day of the last month has brought some new curiosity such as this—another clipping to tape to the wall in search of connections. Were it not for Richard Nixon, it might all be the stuff of whispered conversations around the booths at Hy’s. As it is, 38 years after those two-bit burglaries, we sit around the press gallery wondering how properly to attach the suffix “gate” to the situation.

Once more it is difficult to know whether to curse or thank the 37th president of the United States. Continue…

The Commons: Off we go with no idea where we’re headed

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 6:06 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. “Everything we’ve learned so far has all the hallmarks of a scandal,” Liberal Geoff Regan was quoted as exclaiming in a party press release this afternoon.

And indeed, on this—the hallmarks, that is—there can be little debate. There is a lucrative government contract. There is an RCMP investigation. There is an individual, unregistered to lobby the federal government, who received payments from the individual who was awarded the lucrative contract. There is the party fundraiser the contract winner hosted that was attended by the cabinet minister whose department oversees such contracts. There is—or at least was—some kind of departmental probe that may or may not be related to all of this.

That there is as yet little sense of what exactly, if anything, this amounts to only heightens the intrigue—the House rarely as excited as when it hasn’t the faintest idea where it’s headed.

Continue…

Shadow cabinet shuffle

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Ignatieff has significantly restructured his government-in-waiting. Ralph Goodale is elevated to deputy leader, David McGuinty becomes house leader, Scott Brison replaces John McCallum in finance, Gerard Kennedy takes over environment, Dominic LeBlanc goes to defence, Ujjal Dosanjh goes to health, Marlene Jennings gets justice and Denis Coderre returns to the shadow cabinet as natural resources critic.

Full list after the jump. Continue…

Jean Chrétien gets hung

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, June 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 24 Comments

Past and current MPs came out for the hanging of Jean Chrétien’s official portrait painted by artist Christan Nicholson. Below, Chrétien with the portrait.

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Former Liberal MP Martin Cauchon (left) with Liberal MP Denis Coderre.

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Aline Chrétien (left) and Laureen Harper.

Continue…

What they said (IV)

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 12, 2010 at 10:58 AM - 0 Comments

On February 1, 2008, a Globe and Mail report tied Asadullah Khalid to allegations of torture. Weeks later, during a visit to Afghanistan, Maxime Bernier stated publicly that Canada would like to see the governor removed, a statement that was then said to set back attempts to remove Khalid. He was ultimately replaced in August 2008.

Herein, a collection of QP exchanges relevant to discussion of governor Khalid. Continue…

Girl Guides hit the Hill

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, March 19, 2010 at 11:06 AM - 5 Comments

The Girl Guides of Canada were on the Hill celebrating their 100^th anniversary by handing out cookies to MPs and then holding a reception in 200 West Block. Below, Liberal MPs Mark Eyking (right) and Denis Coderre sample the goods.

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Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe.

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Political Yearbook

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 6 Comments

What they said (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 11:40 PM - 3 Comments

On April 23, 2007, the Globe reported what it had learned from interviews with 30 detainees. Two days later, the paper revealed what the Foreign Affairs department’s own reporting disclosed about torture in Afghanistan. After the premature announcement of a new transfer agreement that week, a new deal was signed on May 3.

Understandably, the issue dominated Question Period during this time—dozens of questions asked between April 23 and May 7 as new stories and allegations came to light. Herein, a selection of questions and answers during that period. Continue…

What they said (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 8:45 PM - 4 Comments

In the first few months of 2007, the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan was discussed during 14 sessions of Question Period: February 6, February 12, February 13, February 21, February 27, March 1, March 2, March 19, March 20, March 21, March 22, March 23, March 26 and March 29. It was on the morning of March 19, that Gordon O’Connor apologized to the House for misleading it about the monitoring of detainees by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Herein, a collection of some of the relevant exchanges during this period. Continue…

MPs at the movies. Smores served!

By Mitchel Raphael - Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 13 Comments

Heritage Minister James Moore held a special screening of the Quebec film De Père en Flic at the National Gallery of Canada. Moore (right) is below with the film’s star, Michel Côté.

Seated together in the theatre were Denis Coderre (right), who resigned in a huff as the Liberals’ Quebec Lieutenant, and Pablo Rodriguez, who was named president of the federal Liberal Quebec caucus after Montreal MP Marc Garneau replaced Coderre.

Continue…

Deleted scenes (V)

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 23, 2009 at 3:16 PM - 18 Comments

This is referenced briefly in the print edition, but here’s a more expansive take.

One could argue that the defining characteristic of Liberal leaders over the last half century is recovery. Pearson, Trudeau and Chretien struggled and recovered. Turner, Martin and Dion struggled and did not. Pearson wins the leadership in 1958 and promptly leads the party to what was then its worst ever defeat. Trudeau nearly loses to Bob Stanfield in 1972 and loses outright to Joe Clark in 1979, and comes back both times to revive his fortunes and win majority governments. And then there’s Chretien. Continue…

The Liberals: Where your first shot is free

By Paul Wells - Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 10:53 PM - 87 Comments

So everyone’s watching to see whether Denis Coderre will mouth a few congenial platitudes on Radio-Canada on Sunday night. Apparently that’s all it takes to make Coderre’s leader forget that Coderre spent a weekend planning a nationally televised news conference in which Coderre made allegations about the Liberal party that will materially hurt its election chances in Quebec for years to come. What a fun party the Liberals will be to cover after Ignatieff gets done sending that message to his caucus!

Kiss and make up

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, October 2, 2009 at 5:55 PM - 19 Comments

The Canadian Press reports:

With some colleagues apparently calling for his head and his leader warning he might be punished, embattled Liberal MP Denis Coderre has used a TV appearance to try mending fences…

Liberals waiting for another bombshell from Coderre found themselves exhaling slightly. Party members had feared the worst when Coderre agreed to appear on “Tout le monde en parle,” a wildly popular French-language talk show on Radio-Canada.

The show will only air Sunday but, if a snippet that ran Friday afternoon is any indication, they needn’t worry.

“I think it’s an opportunity to say that we are a great party,” Coderre said in the clip…

Also appearing on Sunday’s broadcast, alongside Coderre: Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, from the legendary rock group Kiss.

I have just one comment. Legendary?

Sweet revenge for Denis Coderre

By Paul Wells - Friday, October 2, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 88 Comments

They say revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and Denis Coderre has always been fond of generous portions. There was a weekend between Sept. 25, when Michael Ignatieff stopped taking Coderre’s advice on Liberal candidate nominations in two key Montreal ridings, and Sept. 28, when Coderre convened a news conference to resign as Ignatieff’s Quebec lieutenant. During that time, sources say, the Liberal leader telephoned his pugnacious deputy repeatedly. Coderre wouldn’t take the calls. He preferred to plan his revenge at leisure.

So on Monday, Coderre, a scrappy Liberal lifer whose Rolodex is as formidable as his self-regard, told a national television audience he could no longer run his leader’s Quebec operation or serve as his parliamentary defence critic because he had consistently been “short-circuited” by “the leader’s inner circle in Toronto.” Hours later, five other Liberal officials in Quebec with ties to Coderre quit their own positions. Le Devoir’s headline the next day said the party had been “decapitated” in Quebec. Continue…

Alec Castonguay FTW

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 9:01 AM - 42 Comments

Le Devoir’s young political reporter, recently departed from Ottawa (no fool he) to ply his trade back home in Montreal, turns in easily the best tick-tock of the events leading up to Denis Coderre’s unfortunate televised auto da fé of the other day. This sort of access reporting is obviously open to the obvious caveats — how do we know who his sources were? But couldn’t some of them be (gasp) (hand across brow) self-interested? — but it builds a plausible case that this entire business began as a simple case of crossed wires.

And the hero of the morality play is party president Alfred Apps, who went on his own initiative to Montreal in June to sound out Martin Cauchon as a possible candidate. Cauchon, who is lunching with the President of the Liberal Party of Canada and the man who helped recruit Michael Ignatieff into Canadian politics in the first place, believes himself to be the object of a serious, high-level recruitment initiative. Which, to his eventual woe, he takes seriously. Apps notifies neither his leader nor the party’s Quebec election apparatus of Cauchon’s summer-long ruminations because he doesn’t think he’s made any formal offer. The Quebec election apparatus, Denis Coderre, Esq., prop., recruits a candidate for Outremont, believing as one usually does that Outremont will need a candidate. Enter Nathalie Le Prohon, duly-recruited candidate. Almost simultaneously, Cauchon accepts the offer he believes he was given from the party president. Hijinx ensue.

This sort of reported insider narrative is about 90 light-years removed from the kind of journalism (zzzzzzz) Le Devoir practiced for most of its history. I wonder whether they’ll be debating the déontologie of it all at the next FPJQ meeting. Ah well; it’s a ripping good yarn.

Denis, Denis

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 9:53 PM - 108 Comments

It was predictable enough that Denis Coderre would resign his position as the Liberals’ Quebec “lieutenant” in the wake of Michael Ignatieff’s decision to overrule him in the matter of who should carry the party banner in Outremont. Indeed, after such a public rebuff he could hardly do otherwise: his credibility was shot.

What was not so predictable, perhaps, was that he would do so in such a spectacularly destructive, and self-destructive, fashion: the political equivalent of a suicide bombing. To claim that he was the victim of a Toronto-based cabal — one that, by implication, also held Quebec in its grip — is a particularly incendiary charge in Quebec, ever alert to signs of Anglo domination.

It’s not true, of course: Coderre is not Quebec, and many if not most members of the Liberal Party in Quebec would prefer Martin Cauchon to Denis Coderre as their standard-bearer. Amongst those Liberals, I’d guess, would be a majority of the Quebec caucus, plus the party executive — and Jean Chretien. Continue…

The Commons: Gerard Kennedy has some questions

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 5:45 PM - 86 Comments

The Scene. The Prime Minister was pleading humble competence, all shrugs and up-turned palms. But then Michael Ignatieff, having tried his first two questions in French, had to go and repeat his accusations in English.

“Mr. Speaker, Canadians should be able to count on their government to help them find jobs no matter how they vote and no matter where they live, but instead we have a government that is using infrastructure money like a rewards program,” the Liberal leader alleged.

Mr. Ignatieff leaned forward and put his fingers together. The Conservatives groaned.

“Quebec’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average, yet Quebeckers are receiving the lowest per capita infrastructure funding in all of Canada,” he continued. “How does the Prime Minister explain this? How does he explain his own numbers?”

Turns out he explains it quite simply.

“Mr. Speaker,” Mr. Harper reported, “of course, that is completely false.”

“Your numbers!” a Liberal cried in confusion.

And soon enough, Mr. Harper’s pointy finger was back out, poking a hole in the air before him. Continue…

Au revoir

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, September 28, 2009 at 12:55 PM - 8 Comments

If, as has been reported, Denis Coderre will be resigning his post as defence critic in the Liberal shadow cabinet, let the record show that these were his last two contributions to Question Period in that role.

Mr. Speaker, the only climate change we have witnessed today is the change in the colour of the Prime Minister’s tie. It has changed from blue to orange. Although the NDP leader and the Conservative Prime Minister are trying to invent a new dance, known as the SOCO or socialist-conservative dance, Quebeckers are no fools. They have no faith in this government. Tomorrow, the Prime Minister will be in Washington. Will this be another Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? We would like to know who will be the real Prime Minister? Will it be the friend of the reformist dinosaurs, who we heard speaking in Sault Ste. Marie, or the smiling Conservative charlatan?

Mr. Speaker, what I find interesting about this minister’s tie is that now that it is almost blue, it is turning orange. At the meeting of the three amigos this summer, President Obama pushed aside, even trivialized, the issue of the “Buy American” clause. He even said that it was not that serious and not to worry. At the time, the Prime Minister had the opportunity to protect the interests of Quebeckers and Canadians, yet he did nothing. Tomorrow marks one month of silence. It has been seven months since he said anything. He will have another opportunity to assert our interests. How can we have confidence in this Prime Minister when he is rendered speechless by President Obama?