Posts Tagged ‘Elizabeth May’

Another voting marathon approaches

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - 0 Comments

Scott Brison has submitted some 3,000 amendments to C-45 to be considered by the finance committee. The committee will inevitably run out of time to vote on all those amendments, at which point the House could be asked to consider the proposed changes.

Either way, Elizabeth May says she’ll have about 100 amendments to proposed when the latest budget bill returns to the House. So while the precise duration remains to be seen, some kind of voting marathon appears likely.

  • Anti-bullying on the Hill with Jer’s Vision

    By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, November 5, 2012 at 8:25 PM - 0 Comments

    Jer’s Vision, Canada’s Youth Diversity Initiative, held a special reception on the Hill for…

    Jer’s Vision, Canada’s Youth Diversity Initiative, held a special reception on the Hill for parliamentarians to raise awareness about bullying and diversity. Pink cupcakes were served.

     

  • The Commons: Fear of a red planet

    By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 1, 2012 at 5:11 PM - 0 Comments

    The Scene. And so the fate of the nation seems to be found in the fine print of the Canada-China Foreign Investment Partnership Agreement. In there is either our bountiful prosperity or certain doom.

    “Mr. Speaker, under the Prime Minister’s new Canada-China investment agreement, the Chinese state would have the right to buy up new oil leases and expand operations in Canada,” Thomas Mulcair announced this afternoon, leaning in then for emphasis, “as if it were a Canadian company. Any effort to limit ownership by China could be challenged, under the law.”

    Great amounts of our democracy have lately been devoted to the affairs of China. And on this FIPA there are demands for still more debate.

    “Let us be clear,” Mr. Mulcair ventured. “The Prime Minister is exposing Canada to a scenario in which the Government of China could sue us if the Government of Alberta refuses to sell off its natural resources.”

    Now the NDP leader turned to directly face and stare down the sitting Prime Minister.

    “Is this how Conservatives stand up for Canada?” Mr. Mulcair begged.

    Mr. Harper begged to differ. Which is to say he disagreed fully and entirely. Continue…

  • Darth Vader in the House: Halloween in the halls of Parliament

    By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 8:33 PM - 0 Comments

    Hill staffers and some MPs got into the Halloween spirit today on the Hill.  …

    Hill staffers and some MPs got into the Halloween spirit today on the Hill.  Green Leader Elizabeth May wore a witch hat into the House. She was told is was okay as long as she wasn’t being recognized.

  • The Travers Debates

    By Mitchel Raphael - Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 10:05 PM - 0 Comments

    The Travers Debates were held recently at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. It…

    The Travers Debates were held recently at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. It was a fundraiser for the R. James Travers Foreign Corresponding Fellowship named after Toronto Star columnist Jim Travers, who died in 2011.

  • Capital Diary: Laureen Harper gets all fired up, and Elizabeth May’s liquid lunch

    By Mitchel Raphael - Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

    Cooking with Laureen
    The Canadian Gas Association held their second annual Now We’re Cooking…

    Cooking with Laureen

    The Canadian Gas Association held their second annual Now We’re Cooking with Gas reception at the National Arts Centre. The first course was steak tartare—which some joked seemed odd at an event that was all about “cooking” with gas. It was then pointed out that the tempura bits added to the raw steak were indeed cooked over gas. Laureen Harper passed on the first dish, noting she does not eat any raw meat, including sushi. Harper also told Capital Diary that she will not wear fur “unless the whole animal is used.” So she said she would wear seal fur and wears leather “because they use the whole cow.” The next course was a vegetarian dish. When NAC’s executive chef Michael Blackie asked if there were any vegetarians in the crowd, he was shocked when the room was silent, noting that he has never had that happen before. At the event, the Canadian Gas Association presented a cheque for Algonquin College’s hospitality and tourism program in honour of the NAC’s late executive chef Kurt Waldele. Harper shared her fond memories of Waldele and said she has yet to meet an Ottawa chef who did not at one point work with the culinary legend. Cooking with gas is something familiar to Harper: “In Alberta that’s all we use . . . and campfires,” she said.

    An otherworldly achievement

    Speaker Andrew Scheer hosted a special reception on the Hill for astronaut Chris Hadfield, who heads back to space in December and will take command of the International Space Station in March. He will be the first Canadian to do so. Labour Minister Lisa Raitt presented Hadfield with the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. Hadfield is from Raitt’s Ontario riding of Halton, where his parents still live and are active in the community. Raitt says she saw the astronaut’s father, Roger Hadfield, at last year’s Milton Steam-Era festival, where he had built from scratch a First World War Hucks starter that was used to help start up airplanes. It is now in the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum. She says that the astronaut is one of the biggest celebrities in her riding.

    Hungry for a cause

    When a group of climate change activists organized a 12-day hunger strike on the Hill, Green Leader Elizabeth May only consumed fluids for four days, to show her solidarity for the cause. Her secret? Lemon-lime Gatorade. “I needed to replace my electrolytes,” she explains. May noted that she does not only go on hunger strikes against Conservatives. In 2001, she was on a 17-day hunger strike while the Liberals were in power. She was protesting the Sydney tar ponds in Cape Breton.

  • Debating the real issues underneath the farce

    By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 at 1:15 PM - 0 Comments

    CBC radio’s The House hosted a debate this weekend on carbon pricing between Michelle Rempel, Megan Leslie and Elizabeth May. Listen as Ms. Rempel deftly dances around questions about whether her party’s previous support for cap-and-trade amounted to support for a carbon tax and whether the Harper government’s regulations will increase costs for consumers.

  • From the far corner of the room, laments for it all

    By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 1:01 PM - 0 Comments

    Stephane Dion and Elizabeth May talk to iPolitics about the carbon pricing brouhaha.

    “If the best we get from the so-called leadership of the Conservatives and the NDP is to run away from a good idea, I find it absolutely shocking,” May said. “I think Mr. Mulcair, should be ashamed for the role the NDP has had in the past and currently in demonizing the carbon tax.”

    … On Tuesday, Dion remained incredulous about the approach the Conservatives — and the prime minister — are taking. “It’s quite something,” he said. “You have two problems: A prime minister whose obviously distorting the truth, and second, a prime minister whose proud of the fact that he’s not putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions – the only one that I know of around the world. It’s two scandals in one.”

    “I hope one day it will backfire and the prime minister will pay the price, the political price for it,” he said.

  • ‘You will need a carbon price’

    By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 12, 2012 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

    The Canadian president of Royal Dutch Shell says carbon capture and storage—in which the Harper government has invested heavily—won’t be successful unless a price is put on carbon.

    A senior oil executive is urging federal and provincial governments to put a significant price on carbon dioxide to encourage the industry to reduce emissions even as it increases production and accesses new and growing markets. In an interview Monday, Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s Canadian president, Lorraine Mitchelmore, said the country needs to address what often appear to be the competing goals of improved environmental performance and greater output of oil and gas, and “carbon management” must be part of that approach … 

    Ms. Mitchelmore said CCS technology won’t be widely adopted unless there is a price on carbon – either through a tax, a cap-and-trade system or regulations on emissions. “Right now it would need a real significant price, but we see that with the learning and the technology you bring to bear, we see that coming down. But you will need a carbon price,” Ms. Mitchelmore said in an interview from Charlottetown, where she had addressed the federal, provincial and territorial energy ministers.

    Elizabeth May quips. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell made similar comments to John Geddes in June.

    Michael Vaughan points to an MIT study which recommends the United States adopt a carbon tax.

    The MIT study found that taxing carbon at $20 a ton in the U.S. would generate $1.5-trillion in revenue in a 10-year period, which would reduce corporate and personal income taxes, maintain social services spending and reduce the deficit. “With the carbon tax there are virtually no serious trade-offs. Our analysis shows the overall economy improves, taxes are lower and pollution emissions are reduced,” said John M. Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The study said the carbon tax would lower pollution by 20 per cent by 2050 and prevent oil imports from rising. It would also, most importantly, shift energy markets to clean technology.

    Stephane Dion’s carbon tax proposal would have started at $10 per tonne and risen to $40 per tonne. Alberta’s carbon tax is $15 per tonne. British Columbia’s carbon tax is capped at $30 per tonne. The MIT proposal would start at $20 per tonne and rise four percent each year.

  • Mitchel Raphael on Elizabeth May’s fear of flying and NDP tank tops

    By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 11:04 AM - 0 Comments

    Elizabeth May’s fear factor
    Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May… is gearing up

    Mitchel Raphael on May’s fear of flying, and tank-top contests

    NDP's Charlie Angus (Photograph by Mitchel Raphael)

    Elizabeth May’s fear factor

    Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May is gearing up for the three by-elections (yet to be called) that she hopes could double her caucus of one. She feels the Greens have a chance in Calgary Centre, the riding formerly represented by Conservative Lee Richardson, who resigned to work for Alberta Premier Alison Redford, and in Victoria, which became vacant after NDP MP and deputy Speaker Denise Savoie stepped down for health reasons. One of the advantages of the Victoria riding for May is that it borders her own riding, and she won’t have to get on a plane to help with the campaign. Flying can be a problem for May. “I’m too afraid of flying to sleep,” she says. When she takes the red-eye from B.C. to Ottawa she is pretty much up for 24 hours—a skill, she notes, that has its perks: “That’s why I’m so good at voting all night.”

    Tankers not tank tops

    Over the summer, NDP deputy leader Megan Leslie, the party’s environment critic, was raising awareness about environmental issues surrounding the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project. While in British Columbia, her fellow NDP MP Nathan Cullen introduced her to Greer Kaiser, a local activist originally from Nova Scotia, the province that Leslie represents. Leslie connected Kaiser with local Halifax environment groups (the Atlantic chapter of Sierra Club Canada, the Ecology Action Centre and the Atlantic Canada Sustainable Energy Coalition) and the duo brought their pipeline-awareness message to a barbeque called “Tankers vs. Tank Tops.” Participants were asked to wear creative tops for the cause. Leslie had a multicoloured tank top and then put on a T-shirt, given to her by the organizers, that said, “No pipeline. No tankers. No problem.” Liberal MP Geoff Regan attended the event but did not wear a tank top.

    Continue…

  • Political reaction to the shooting in Quebec

    By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 5, 2012 at 1:31 AM - 0 Comments

    One person is dead after a man opened fire at Pauline Marois’ victory rally in Montreal.

     

     

     

     

  • Elizabeth May vs. Northern Gateway

    By Aaron Wherry - Friday, August 31, 2012 at 4:47 PM - 0 Comments

    The Green MP has posted her submission to the Northern Gateway review.

    The proponent has violated its social licence to operate through a culture of negligence. This failing is well-documented in the report of the United States National Transportation Safety Board  (Enbridge Incorporated, Hazardous Liquid Pipeline Rupture and Release, Marshall Michigan, July 25, 2010, Accident Report NTSB/PAR-12/01, PB2012-916501, July 10, 2012).  The spills and pipeline leaks in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 2010 and additional spill in the summer of 2012 in Wisconsin are ample evidence of the corporate culture of Enbridge being negligent. The panel is commended for accepting the report of the US. NTSB into evidence.  As evidence before this panel, the litany of failures in preventing the Kalamazoo spill and subsequent negligence in ignoring alarms and pumping more bitumen-diluent mix into a broken pipeline must lead to a rejection of this proposal at this time.

  • Mitchel Raphael on power hiking in Banff and an Olympic fanatic

    By Mitchel Raphael - Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

    The Hill’s hikers…
    For several years, Laureen Harper has been doing an annual summer

    Mitchel Raphael on power hiking in Banff and an Olympic fanatic

    Courtesy Laureen Harper

    The Hill’s hikers

    For several years, Laureen Harper has been doing an annual summer hike in different parts of Canada. The hikes are planned over an entire year. This summer she and her friends, including Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose, covered 55 km and two mountain passes in Banff, Alta. The group saw a porcupine, grizzly bear, gopher and pika (a small, rabbit-like mammal). Wildflowers were in bloom. Every year Harper makes all the food. “We always eat the same food, year after year. I am the cook. We have jambalaya, Chinese food, stroganoff, and I always bake bread at least once,” says the PM’s wife. Ambrose says Harper’s herb and garlic bread is a hike highlight. There were also some good snacks. Notes Ambrose: “Everyone is supposed to bring a treat to share with the group so I carted a bag of marshmallows all the way up there. We carved sticks and shoved mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups into the marshmallows and roasted them on an open fire.” The treat was a huge hit.

    To prepare for the hike, Ambrose wore her backpack for two weeks with weights in it and did her grocery shopping with the backpack to prepare her muscles. She managed to limit her backpack on the trip to about 15 kilos. Most of the others came in with backpacks around 23 kilos. This year the group did a circuit up Mosquito Creek and over North Molar Pass, down the Pipestone Valley, and back up over Molar pass into the Mosquito Valley. “And yes,” Harper says, “there were lots of mosquitoes.” At one point the group could not cross a river and an alternate passage was needed. Ambrose says Harper is “very comfortable in the backcountry and she knows how to read a map.” Any bathing was in freezing cold water. They brought along special fast-drying towels, which dried with a few shakes.

    On their last night of hiking the group met two couples from Edmonton. One of them said to the PM’s wife: “You look like Laureen Harper.” Then it clicked and the person said: “I saw you in Maclean’s. You’re a big hiker.” As the groups parted ways, she invited the couples for tea at 24 Sussex. This is how Harper summed up the trek: “The first two days we walked 29 km and were pretty tired. Everything was pretty wet and we had to slog through lots of mud. When we hit the Canmore McDonald’s after five days on the trail we were looking pretty grubby. I think people moved out of the way to get away from us.”

    Continue…

  • Every vote counts

    By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 19, 2012 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

    Adam Goldenberg doesn’t like Elizabeth May’s suggestion to the Green and New Democrat candidates in Etobicoke Centre.

    If the election results were tainted, and the Supreme Court tosses out the result, then every one of those votes will be voided … As I argued here last week, the result of an election is not the same as its outcome; the result is the final vote tally, the outcome is the identity of the winner. The question for the Supreme Court, under a truly democratic interpretation of the Canada Elections Act, is not who should or should not have won, but rather whether the result – that is, the number of votes cast for each candidate – was affected by Election Day irregularities. Votes for Mr. Optiz and Mr. Wrzesnewskyj are not the only ones that matter. Why count every vote unless every vote counts?

    As I noted yesterday, there’s some precedent for parties sitting out a by-election, but I’m not sure there’s any precedent for doing so in these circumstances.

    Since 1949, five results have been declared void: Annapolis-Kings in 1949, Yukon in 1957, St. John’s West in 1962, Comox-Alberni in 1968 and York North in 1988. In the case of York North, all the parties that participated in the original vote fielded candidates in the by-election. In Annapolis-Kings and Yukon, only two parties were represented in the first place. In St. John’s West, the NDP was represented in the by-election, despite finishing a distant third in the original vote. The 1968 vote in Comox-Alberni resulted in a nine-vote win for the Liberal over the New Democrat, but the Progressive Conservative still ran in the subsequent by-election—though the Social Credit Party and the Communist Party seem to have sat out after finishing a distant fourth and fifth respectively in the original vote.

    Mind you, the official records don’t indicate why the Socreds and Communists declined—and the reason for sitting out would seem important here.

  • Standing down

    By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 at 11:49 AM - 0 Comments

    Elizabeth May suggests that, in the event of a by-election in Etobicoke Centre, the Greens and NDP should stand down to allow for a straightforward grudge match between Ted Opitz and Borys Wrzesnewskyj.

    Although Ms. May she said would not normally urge her party to stay off a ballot, the situation in Etobicoke Centre is highly unusual. If anyone was unfairly denied a seat in that riding it was Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, she said, and if there is a by-election it should be “a clean vote between Borys and Ted.”

    Ms. May has some history in this regard: Stephane Dion agreed in 2007 to not run a candidate in Central Nova in an ill-fated attempt to help Ms. May defeat Peter MacKay.

    There is some general notion that parties might not field a candidate when a by-election occurs to provide an opportunity for the new leader of another party to win a seat, but, at least in recent history, it has been inconsistently applied. The Liberals, for instance, didn’t run candidates against Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest) in 2002 or Joe Clark (Kings-Hants) in 2000 and the Progressive Conservatives didn’t field a candidate against Jean Chretien (Beauséjour) in 1990. But the Liberals did field candidates against Stockwell Day (Okanagan-Coquihalla) in 2000 and Brian Mulroney (Central Nova) in 1983. The NDP fielded candidates in all of those by-elections.

    The last time an election result was declared void and a by-election ordered—York North in 1988—the dispute involved a close finish between a Liberal (Maurizio Bevilacqua) and a Progressive Conservative (Michael O’Brien). The NDP fielded a candidate in the by-election and ended up getting ahead of the Progressive Conservatives to finish second.

    Astute reader Derek Leebosh notes that in 1942, the Liberals officially stood down in York South when Conservative party leader Arthur Meighen sought a seat, but the CCF candidate (with Liberal assistance) went on to win the by-election. This post from Torontoist explains the situation in lavish detail.

  • Red hot summer

    By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 13, 2012 at 8:06 PM - 0 Comments

    While the honouring of Norman Bethune continues to cause a minor fuss, Elizabeth May questions Canada’s relationship to China.

    In the House, explaining why Bill C-38 must be passed, the Prime Minister said it was in order ‘to provide certainty to investors.’ (May 10, 2012). What investors would those be? In the last few years direct ownership of Alberta oil sands by Chinese state-owned oil companies has gone from nearly nothing to over $12 billion. Chinese money is already invested in the Enbridge pipeline and tanker scheme, Petro-China wants to build the pipeline, and Suncor is talking about using lowerwaged Chinese temporary workers–just in time to drive down wages and environmental standards. Sinopec is the fifth largest corporation in the world with a board of directors appointed by the Chinese Communist polit-bureau. And now Sinopec’s 9% share in Syncrude has given it veto power over any future decision to refine Syncrude bitumen in Canada, rather than put it in tankers…

    So, back to that wonderful transmission of values through trade. Does anyone else notice that it seems to be working? Canada is absorbing Chinese values respecting human rights, labour laws, and environmental protections. It is indeed a national disgrace.

  • Happy Canada Day

    By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, July 1, 2012 at 11:26 AM - 0 Comments

    Canada Day video greetings from Jason Kenney, Ted Opitz, Cheryl Gallant, Peggy Nash, Jinny Sims, Colin Carrie, Joyce Murray, Wayne Marston, Craig Scott, John Weston, Ralph Goodale, Elizabeth May, Robert Chisholm, Claude Gravelle, Christine Moore, Laurin Liu, Ray Boughen, James Lunney, Russ Hiebert, Jack Harris, Peter Braid, Steven Blaney, Randy Kamp and, expressing their best wishes in rather similar words, Daryl Kramp, James Bezan, Randy Hoback, Diane Finley, Ed Holder, Ryan Leef, Bob Zimmer, Dave MacKenzie,John Carmichael, Bal Gosal, Costas Menegakis and Parm Gill.

    After the jump, a video from the Prime Minister and statements from Thomas Mulcair and Bob Rae. Continue…

  • Skipping the exam

    By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 12:21 PM - 0 Comments

    No Conservative MP showed up this morning to take Elizabeth May’s C-38 quiz. Although apparently Independent MP Bruce Hyer took the test and scored five out of five.

    Ms. May’s office has now posted the three quizes she prepared, with the correct answers included.

  • May challenges Conservative MPs to a quiz

    By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 18, 2012 at 3:55 PM - 0 Comments

    The Green MP is inviting to take part in a C-38 quiz tomorrow morning.

    On Tuesday morning, June 19, from 10 am –12 pm, Room 263-S in Centre Block will become an examination room.   Any Conservative MP willing to demonstrate his or her knowledge of the content of Bill C-38 will be given a short written quiz.   A clean copy of the bill will be available to them for reference.

    Any MP who receives a passing grade will have a tree planted in the location of his or her choice. “This is an open-book, multiple-choice quiz,” explained May.  “I do not expect MPs to have memorized the bill, but, if they are not familiar with the legislation, they will find it difficult to achieve a good score.

  • C-38 and the inevitability of majority government

    By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 18, 2012 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments

    Elizabeth May talks to the West Block about last week’s votes.

    Tom Clark: Deal with the points that the government makes about this though. They’re saying first of all the Opposition parties would have voted against all these bills even if they had been separated out. They said that it was a colossal waste of time, that the last 24 hours, 36 hours changed nothing. The bill passed, everything becomes law. So they said, it’s expensive, it cost $120,000 a day to keep Parliament sitting and so you wasted time and money and changed nothing. 

    Elizabeth May: Well why do we bother with elections really when you think about it. All that time and money spent. You know, how about just shutting down Parliament and saying to Stephen Harper, okay well now that you’re elected we know how everything is going to go because you’ve got the most seats so we’ll go home. We’ve lost the threat of what democracy is about in Westminster Parliamentary tradition. Too many people think we elect a prime minister. We don’t. We elect 308, soon to be 338 Members of Parliament and each one of us has a responsibility to do our job and the idea that it’s a time waster to try and fix legislation, I promise you, if we’d accepted my amendments, Canada would have saved tens of millions dollars because the kind of…the poison pills, just like a warehouse of poison pills in that bill; you’re never going to get through all of them in advance but we could have fixed things. That was the goal.

    Inevitability was part of the argument Lisa Raitt tried to make (see the 7:25pm entry) on Thursday evening and Ms. May is probably right to follow that logic to its inevitable absurdity. If the only vote that matters is the one on election day, why bother at all with a Parliament? Why bother with MPs?

    Oddly, the inevitability argument actually compels government MPs, even more than opposition MPs, to justify their existences.

  • Last week’s standing contest

    By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 18, 2012 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

    The good people at openparliament.ca have tabulated MP attendance for last Wednesday’s (or last Thursday’s, as it were) C-38 votes.

    Fourteen MPs missed five or fewer of those 157 votes: seven New Democrats, four Liberals, one Conservative, one Bloc MP and Elizabeth May. The NDP’s Fin Donnelly, Jasbir Sandhu, Jinny Simms and Mathieu Ravignat were present in the House for every single vote. Government House leader Peter Van Loan, the NDP’s Jonathan Tremblay and Ms. May* failed to register one vote each.

    Among other party leaders, Bob Rae missed 34 votes, Stephen Harper missed 49 votes and Thomas Mulcair missed 58 votes.

    Each of the parties was working in shifts of varying length and design—the Conservatives working with relatively short and relatively regimented cycles, the New Democrats seeming to use much longer intervals.

    (*Ms. May was present for that vote and stood to register a vote, but due to some confusion over whether she was voting yea or nay, her vote was not counted.)

  • Live: A very long night for a very long bill

    By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 13, 2012 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

    Welcome to live coverage of tonight’s C-38 votes. It was expected that voting would begin around 5:30pm, but some procedural fussing about by the Liberals seems to have delayed those votes by a few hours. Stay tuned throughout the evening (and morning?) as we follow the parliamentary festivities.

    4:43pm. If you’re only now tuning in, you just missed a fascinating series of points of order, during which Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux twice asked the Speaker to clarify the rules of the House (Speaker Devolin invited Mr. Lamoureux to read the standing orders) and Bob Rae objected to the Defence Minister’s earlier use of the word “mendaciousness” (Peter MacKay duly stood and withdrew the remark). The House is now at the time reserved each day for the presenting of petitions and will soon move to the final period of report stage debate on C-38.

    4:51pm. The New Democrats held a photo op this afternoon to demonstrate how they were preparing for tonight’s votes. Mostly this seems to have involved Nathan Cullen removing his jacket and writing “C-38″ on a giant white pad of paper.

    5:04pm. The Liberals have chosen now to discuss Mr. Cullen’s point of privilege. And now there is some discussion between the Speaker, Elizabeth May and Denis Coderre about how long one can speak when responding to a question of privilege.

    5:15pm. With Mr. Lamoureux still responding to Mr. Cullen’s point of privilege, Conservative MP Bob Zimmer rises on a point of order to question Mr. Lamoureux’s point of privilege. The Speaker stands and reads the rules pertaining to questions of privilege, specifically that such interventions should be “brief and concise” and that the Speaker has the right to “terminate” the discussion. Liberal MP Massimo Pacetti rises on a point of order to object to Mr. Zimmer’s point of order. Mr. Lamoureux attempts a point of order to respond to Mr. Zimmer, but the Speaker suggests he carry on with his point of privilege, but then Mr. Coderre rises on a point of order to complain about the Speaker’s desire to move things along. The Speaker asserts his impartiality and attempts to straighten this all out, but Mr. Coderre rises on another point of order to clarify his respect for the Speaker, but also to express his desire that Mr. Lamoureux be allowed to give a full response to Mr. Cullen’s point of privilege. Mr. Pacetti rises on a point of order to add his concern that Mr. Lamoureux be allowed to speak fully. The Speaker says he was merely reminding everyone of the rules and gives Mr. Lamoureux five minutes to finish and, finally, we’re now back to Mr. Lamoruex’s point of privilege.

    5:30pm. The Speaker stands and calls an end to Mr. Lamoureux’s remarks and attempts to move to the last hour of report stage debate on C-38, but now Mauril Belanger is up on a separate point of privilege.

    5:32pm. The Speaker cuts off Mr. Belanger to move to deferred votes on two opposition motions and one private member’s bill. MPs have 30 minutes to report to the chamber.

    5:40pm. Conservative MPs Blaine Calkins and Brian Jean seem rather excited about tonight’s sleepover. Continue…

  • ‘It is incumbent upon all members of Parliament to be informed before they vote’

    By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 6:44 PM - 0 Comments

    Picking up where the discussion left off yesterday, Nathan Cullen returned to his point of privilege this afternoon after QP, repeating his concern that MPs are not receiving the information they need to assess C-38.

    Peter Van Loan, Elizabeth May and Wayne Easter added their interventions.

    Below, the transcript. Continue…

  • Which security experts were responsible for the G20?

    By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 11, 2012 at 4:27 PM - 0 Comments

    Nearer the end of QP today, the NDP’s Andrew Cash rose to inquire about the latest revelations concerning the G20 summit in Toronto.

    Andrew Cash: Mr. Speaker, a G20 planning document by the Canadian Forces listed a number of potential security threats. Among them, embarrassment to the Government of Canada. It is too bad it did not listen, because that is exactly what happened. It cannot plan the largest civil security undertaking in Canadian history on the back of an envelope in four short months. The results: smashed windows, illegal arrests, a city turned upside down. After so many G20 failures, will the government finally do something right and apologize to the people of Toronto?

    Peter MacKay: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member would know that security decisions around the G8, G20 were made by security experts, not politicians. In fact, the members of the Canadian Forces that supported the RCMP that supported municipal and provincial police were there to provide security for Canadians and for our international guests. This was an unprecedented period in our country’s history with the G8 and G20 coming back to back. I am very proud of the work that was done by members of the Canadian Forces.

    It was Elizabeth May’s turn to ask a question today and, a few moments after this, she took the opportunity to follow up. Continue…

  • Elizabeth May reacts

    By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 11, 2012 at 1:26 PM - 0 Comments

    Via Twitter.

    Speaker rules against my point of Order. So C-38 continues to Report Stage… Disappointing, but glad I tried.

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